


ripped apart

by thedemonhammer



Series: the sound of bones snapping [1]
Category: No. 6 (Anime & Manga), No. 6 - All Media Types, No. 6 - Asano Atsuko
Genre: M/M, they're called Bees, zombie apocalypse AU, zombies aren't called zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-09-08 15:11:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 44,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8849815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedemonhammer/pseuds/thedemonhammer
Summary: Shion barely had enough time to gasp, overwhelmed by the stench of decay and frightened by the cat-like pounce of the Bee. He watched through the pale darkness as the Bee’s thin body arced toward him, fingers outstretched like the legs of an albino spider.





	1. Exit, Pursued by Chains

**Author's Note:**

> My college roommate and I began writing about this AU about a year and a half ago. It's changed and updated as time's gone on, but I finally think I've come to a place where I'm happy enough with it to finally post it. always struck me as one of the best series to do a zombie apocalypse AU about—they're already in a dystopian society, how hard would it be to add in some extra danger?
> 
> This is the prologue to this story. I'm planning on there being three parts, each with about ten chapters and one prologue. The last part will probably have an epilogue, too. That's the goal, at least.
> 
> This whole story has been in production for a while, and I'm finally glad to be getting it out there. I know my roommate would be pleased with it, as he was a huge part of helping me plan it out.
> 
> My goal is to post a new chapter for this at least once a week, twice if I'm able. Work's been a bit hectic, so hopefully after the holiday season, everything will mellow out and I'll be able to get back to doing some writing.
> 
> Though the prologue isn't very long, I hope you'll all enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Hopefully I'll have chapter one posted by tomorrow. That's the goal, anyway—we'll see how well I'm actually able to do that.
> 
> Enjoy the story, everyone!

Nezumi drew in a deep breath and almost choked. The air tasted like smoke and blood. Usually the forest smelled like leaves and dirt, with only the faintest scent of lingering decay. He took a shaking step forward, no longer running. It had taken all of his strength to escape the village as it had been burnt down, flaming beams and broken stones raining down like snow. It had all been in vain—as he was running around crying women and men with sharp sticks and guns, Nezumi had seen the Chained One cut through the fire like a blur of black and blue.

He was faster than any of the other Bees. _Much_ faster. Nezumi had only seen him at a distance, stalking the fences and putting his fingers through the links when someone wandered too close. He usually darted back into the forest when men approached with weapons.

Nezumi took another deep breath and pushed forward. East Block hadn’t been much of a home to him these past two years, but it was a shame it had to fall. It hardly mattered. He would find a new place to live. He always did.

The scent of smoke and death dissipated the further he pushed into the forest. There were hardly any Bees out, which surprised Nezumi more than the sudden fire in East Block had. Weren’t the forests rumored to be filled with the horrid things?

Had he the strength, Nezumi might’ve laughed. Everyone in East Block had been so afraid of the Bees, they’d built chain-link fences around the entirety of their home. It was a mock homage to the methods No.6 and the rest of the districts had done to prevent the Bees from claiming humanity.

 _No.6_. Even thinking the name made Nezumi’s stomach churn. He hated everything about that wretched place. It had been the bane of his existence since he was eight years old—since the men had come and released the loud, wailing nightmare upon his real home.

The forest might’ve been safe because of the burning village somewhere behind him. Nezumi couldn’t remember how far he had traveled from East Block, but he wasn’t there any longer. Perhaps the Bees that thrived in this forest had been attracted by the overwhelming scent of blood and destruction the Chained One had left in his wake. Or maybe the screams of men and women dying had lured them away.

 _Shk-shk_.

Nezumi lifted his head and glanced around the forest. Dizziness swept through his mind, urging him to lie down and forget everything. He shook his head and continued to peer into the dark forest. It could have just been a Bee, a strangler. Bees were dangerous in hordes, but they weren't fast. A child could outpace one. If it was just one Bee, Nezumi would be fine.

A quick dart of black zipped through the dark branches—the _shk-shk_ sound came from leaves and twigs, crushed beneath heavy boots.

Unless it was _that_ Bee.

Nezumi started running. His legs burned and his lungs cried out for rest, but Nezumi continued to run. He wanted to sleep. He was tired, cold, ill, and all he wanted to do was lie down and go to sleep. Maybe if he was asleep, the rip and tear of teeth and claws through his body wouldn’t hurt so much.

The blur of black angled back through the forest and cut around him. He was circling Nezumi like the sharks his mother had told him about years ago. Sharks were predators, and if this predator was pursuing him, that made Nezumi the prey.

He hated it.

He glanced back over his shoulder as the blur vanished, and hardly noticed the sudden expanse of white right in front of his face. Nezumi came to an abrupt halt, his breath catching up with him. Drawing in several deep gulps, Nezumi’s eyes darted over the white surface. It rose higher than he could crane his neck back to see, made entirely of glassy metal.

Nezumi would have recognized this place even if he were blind. His stomach burned with ice, and as he lowered his head and bit his lip, he knew immediately that he was standing outside No.6.

 _Shk-shk_.

Nezumi whirled, his back pressed to the imposing metal wall—and caught sight of a gaping mouth filled with bloody white pearls.


	2. The Walled City

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something had caught his eye the moment he spotted the street urchin: blood. Plenty of it. The left sleeve of the boy’s tunic was slathered in the stuff, and from the way the hand around his throat wavered, Shion imagined the injury still hurt quite a bit. He’d nearly forgotten about the boy’s injury; it had been what had caused Shion to lower his guard.
> 
>  
> 
> “Don’t move,” the street urchin hissed, and Shion immediately felt something warm bubble beneath his ribcage.
> 
>  
> 
> In an instant, all his fears had been blown away, like the flame of a dying candle. The emptiness this action left behind was immediately filled with something Shion had hardly felt before; he wouldn’t call it pity, not in the slightest, but this feeling...he had no word for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Managed to finish writing the first chapter, although it took quite a bit longer than I had initially planned. To do so, I had to establish a bit more of the world and get Shion and Nezumi introduced to each other in this AU. Their meeting is pretty much the same as in the manga, but altered more to match up with the Bees existing outside of the wall, and with the thing that was chasing Nezumi in the prologue.
> 
> In following chapters, the story takes a different turn. Shion gets in trouble for harboring Nezumi instead of turning him in, but his punishment is a bit different.
> 
> That, in turn, will lead to the remainder of the story. I hope everyone will stick around for that and enjoy it. I had a lot of fun writing this scene, and it also allowed me to go back and re-read/rewatch NO.6 again.
> 
> Enjoy the chapter, everyone!

Shion had grown up hearing stories about the other five districts. No.1 had fallen to ruin decades before his birth. No.2 and No.4 were places of debauchery and scandal. No.3 had been stripped off the map. No one in No.6 actually knew whether or not the third district thrived with life. Questioning such things went against the will of the government.

 

No.5 continued its trade operations with No.6, limiting connection to a single gated walkway that only the Security Bureau had access to. Traveling to No.5 required submitting a travel request, waiting six to eight weeks for approval, and a signed contract that no restricted items would be brought into No.6, under threat of banishment.

 

Shion had never traveled to No.5, not in his twelve years of life. A friend of his mother’s had gone when Shion was a small child. He’d commented that No.5 seemed “free, compared to the walled-in arena of No.6.” Shion’s mother had frowned at the word “arena”, and hastily requested that her friend never mention it to her again.

 

That was something Shion had come to understand about the place he called home. No.6 was surrounded on all sides by high walls, made of an impervious metal. The Security Bureau repeatedly claimed that the walls were to keep the Bees out, but Shion felt, though he would never say aloud, as if the walls were meant to keep the citizens of No.6 trapped inside.

 

The Bees had provided a perfect reason for No.6 to maintain such an imposing cage, whose only escape was an electronic gate, connected to another district whose fate was so similar.

 

Shion had only ever seen Bees in pictures—human in shape, with snowy coarse hair and brilliant scarlet eyes, mouths twisted in bloody sneers and fingers blackened into outstretched claws. The walls of No.6 made it impossible to see the Bees wandering outside the city. Perhaps there were hundreds, thousands, the majority of humanity turned into hungering beasts.

 

Or, Shion wondered, maybe there was a single Bee lurking outside, exaggerated into a malicious entity by the Bureau for the purpose of terrorizing the citizens of No.6 into obeying.

 

No.6 forced its citizens to understand basic information about the monsters lurking beyond the walls: the disease, carried in the saliva, injected through a bite, implanted an egg inside the host’s body. The host carried the egg for an indeterminate amount of time, the creature inside emitting a toxin into the bloodstream. The toxin ate away at the flesh—killing the host. Once the host perished, the newly hatched bee, an ugly, twisted black abomination, ate its way through the host’s flesh and emerged. And once it exited the body, a chemical reaction deep inside bleached the corpse of color—and reanimation would occur.

 

There were times when Shion would stand on the wooden balcony of his house and pretend that, for once in his life, he could look out over the walls of No.6, and beyond it would be miles and miles of forest that weren’t filled to the brim with deadly claws and teeth.

 

Sometimes his mother Karan would join him on the balcony. She would stand at his side, brown hair pulled away from her face, hands shielding her eyes from the sun, and look at the wall. Karan never looked happy when she gazed at the walls of No.6. Shion had told her several times that she didn’t need to force herself to be up there with him, but she would just smile and continue to look anyway.

 

Shion wondered if his mother dreamed of the same things he did. Freedom from No.6. A world without the threat of the Bees. A life outside the terror. He couldn’t imagine for a moment why anyone would want otherwise.

 

And then Shion remembered the dark looks of the Security Bureau officers, the cold calculation and accuracy of No.6’s government, and he understood all too well why freedom might not be possible.

 

**~ * ~ * ~ * ~**

 

As the final bell of the school day rang, Shion tried to pretend he hadn’t been falling asleep in class. He looked down at his notebook. It was blank. He sighed—he had a test in a week, and he hadn’t taken a single note. He hadn’t been paying attention to the lecture.

 

He tried to remember where he’d been the last hour and a half. Obviously he’d managed to look the part of diligent student—his ecology teacher had the eyes of a hawk when it came to students slacking off, but her gaze seemed to have slipped right over Shion. He thanked whatever force there was watching over him. The last thing he needed was a call home to his mother.

 

Shion tried to piece together where they time had gone. He’d been watching the leaves; the way they rustled and danced in the harsh wind. There would be a storm tonight. He couldn’t wait.

 

While he’d been watching the leaves, he could have sworn they’d been taking shapes. Shapes he saw every time he closed his eyes. Bees. Human faces with blood-stained mouths and crimson, dead eyes. Inches from his face, teeth snapping, hands reaching. And then, just before the Bees clamped down on him, infecting him with their poisonous bite, the man arrived.

 

No, not a man—a boy. When Shion closed his eyes and drifted away into nightmares, he was always rescued by a boy with hair the color of gunmetal, pulled back from an elegant face. Dressed in all black, wielding a thin knife that glimmered like a shock of moonlight, the boy sliced through the Bees, scattering their blood about like rain water. And then he turned to Shion and—

 

And Shion couldn’t remember the rest. He never could. There were several things about his dreams he could never remember; where he was, why there were so many Bees surrounding him, or the color of the boy’s eyes. It was a minor detail, but all the same, Shion found himself wanting to remember—wanting to _know_.

 

“So, what have you got planned for the day?”

 

Shion started at the sound of a girl’s voice, and turned with a smile. Safu plopped down into the seat at his side. She had been his friend since childhood—the only person his bizarre behavior didn’t bother. Her long hair had been recently cut into an elegant bob, falling just below her chin. She wore a dark blue sweater with a zig-zagged pattern across the front, an outfit hand-stitched with love from her grandmother.

 

“Hey, Safu,” Shion said, stuffing his books into his messenger bag. “Nothing much. Mom’s making dinner for my birthday, so I guess that’s pretty much it.”

 

Safu’s eyes widened for only a brief moment. “That’s right, it’s your birthday today! Oh, I can’t believe I forgot about that!”

 

“Don’t worry about it,” Shion said, not even the slightest bit hurt. After all, a birthday was just another year, wasn’t it? It wasn’t as if some significant change would occur in his life just because he had reached another year in his life. “It’s not a big deal.”

 

“ _Not a big deal?_ ” Safu’s expression was a cross between anger and disbelief. “It’s your twelfth birthday!”

 

Shion shrugged.

 

Safu exhaled and flopped back against the seat. “You’re hopeless. Well, I apologize for forgetting. That was foolish of me. And I hope dinner with your mother goes well. Mrs. K is a wonderful woman.”

 

“Thanks, Safu. Oh, I meant to ask, how’s your grandmother doing?”

 

Safu’s expression hardened just a bit, and Shion instantly regretted asking. “She’s...stable. The doctor says she should be able to come home in a few weeks, but I worry about her. I believe there’s something they’re missing, but...I’m not sure what.”

 

Shion’s lips pressed together into a tight line. Safu’s grandmother had been in and out of the hospital for two years. As her grandmother was her only family, the constant hospitalization had been incredibly hard for Safu. Shion had done his best to be there for his friend when she needed him—she’d even stayed over his house a few times, when being at the hospital took its toll on her nerves—but there was only so much he could do for her.

 

“Anyway,” Safu said, shaking herself from the emotions of the previous topic, “today’s your birthday, so no negativity, OK? Maybe we can both go see my grandmother tomorrow.”

 

“Yeah,” Shion said, and gave her a genuine smile. “I’d like that.”

 

Shion and Safu gathered the remainder of their things and headed out of the classroom to join the throng of kids in the hall. Most of them were lingering by the lockers—stylish, perfect metal columns that glittered white in the building. Pearl-colored titles stretched from one end of the hall to the next, the walls rising with panes of impenetrable glass.

 

Shion noticed several people—most of them boys—glancing at Safu as they passed by. Shion shrugged it off. It wasn’t uncommon for boys to look at Safu; she was a pretty girl, without a doubt.

 

People generally enjoyed Safu, but tended to shy away from him. Shion didn’t mind. He preferred to be alone, or in the company of as few people as possible. He drifted into his own thoughts so often that people tended to label him “rude” and “inattentive” when he asked them to repeat themselves.

 

Shion, like Safu, was eligible of the Gifted Courses, however. Ranked with a high IQ and regarded as a diligent student, Shion’s class ranking had opened several doorways to an impressive future. Shion didn’t put too much stock into it. The Gifted Courses were reserved for the best of the best—those with the best chance to be considered No.6’s elites.

 

Shion wanted no part of it. He’d never said anything to Safu about it, but the thought of being considered one of No.6’s best made his stomach churn. The only reason he continued to try hard in school and maintain his Gifted Course status was because it meant that, when he turned sixteen, he’d be able to travel abroad to No.5 and escape No.6, if only for a few months.

 

To see something new—to experience the world beyond the metal walls—that was all Shion wanted.

 

Just as Shion was about to step outside, Safu caught him around the waist and yanked him back. He whirled to blink at her. “S—Safu? Are you OK?”

 

She stared at him with wide, dark eyes. “I have something for you.”

 

“Oh, uh, OK. Sure.” Shion gently removed Safu’s arms from around his waist. With her pressed so close to him, he could smell the scent of her shampoo: coconut with just a slight hint of lime. The sweater she wore had been washed recently. She and Shion were roughly the same height, so with her staring him down, her lips were inches from his own. Shion took an unconscious step back.

 

Flashing him a brilliant smile, Safu set her backpack on the ground and rummaged around inside. Shion took a moment to glance at the windows. An arrangement of black storm clouds rolled in; he held his breath. All he wanted to do was go home, set himself by the window, and watch the storm roll by.

 

For a moment, thinking about his dark bedroom reminded him of the dreams. Darkness, a slathering horde of Bees closing in all around him, the slender boy dropping in and dispatching them all.

 

Shion closed his eyes and pushed the thought out of his head. It was impossible—he’d lived in No.6 all his life. He’d never even seen a Bee in real life—

 

The stench of decay came to him, hard and sudden. Shion’s eyes snapped open. A large window showing the vast expanse of No.6, blanketed by the storm overhead.

 

“Here it is!” Shion turned to look at Safu. _I almost forgot she was there_. Clutched between her tiny hands, she held a carefully wrapped brown package. Lips drawn back over her perfect white teeth, Safu thrust the package into his chest. “Tricked you, didn’t I? You didn’t really think I’d forget your birthday, did you?”

 

Shion ducked his head with a murmured “thank you” and clutched the package. Paper crinkled beneath his hands. Peeling it back, Shion came face-to-face with a vast expanse of lavender fabric. He held it up and realized it was a sweater—hand-made and shockingly similar to the one Safu wore. Shion had been around Safu’s grandmother enough to recognize her handiwork.

 

“Wow, it’s beautiful,” Shion remarked. Safu smiled, and it was worth it to see her happy. Shion didn’t feel the need to put a sweater on—it wasn’t very cool out—but he slipped it on over his head anyway. Safu’s eyes lit up as she watched him.

 

“Happy birthday, Shion,” said Safu, and her hand sought out his. And Shion, wanting to keep her happy, finally able to see that amazing smile on her face again, reached out and took her hand, and together they took off down the darkening streets.

 

**~ * ~ * ~ * ~**

 

The Chained One’s wails echoed around him, farther and farther away. Nezumi continued to run. His shoulder ached from where the heavy metal chain had sliced through his skin. It wasn’t a deep cut, but the bleeding refused to stop. It seeped through his tightly clenched fingers, leaving a trail of red drops in his wake.

 

If the Chained One was like the other Bees, it would use the trail to find him in no time. And if not the Bee, then the officials of No.6 would use it to unearth him.

 

It had been a stroke of luck that Nezumi had discovered a crack in No.6’s wall, large enough for him to slip through. The Chained One was far too tall, easily rising at an intimidating six-foot-three. The crack could accommodate a child with ease—the Chained One had slammed against the wall, shoving his arm into the gaping hole, rattling and screaming, as Nezumi had scurried away.

 

**~ * ~ * ~ * ~**

 

Shion pressed his nose against the glass walls of his bedroom window. Rain danced just beyond his briefly parted lips, separated from his taste by only a thin sheet of glass.

 

Storms in No.6 were common, and while many residents lamented the darkening skies and lingering scents of a world soaked in nature’s tears, Shion looked forward to it. Then again, Shion supposed, he had always been a little bit different from the other residents of No.6.

 

Shion’s body burned with excitement. A thunderstorm was one thing, but today’s storm seemed to be escalating into something much more hazardous. And though he knew he should have been concerned about the increasing winds tearing his windows apart, or the bullet-shaped rains tearing through his roof, he couldn’t help but smile.

 

Somewhere downstairs, his mother, Karan, was perched on the couch, watching the news. Shion had been watching it with her, but the first roll of thunder called him away to his bedroom. Nothing interesting ever happened on the news. The Bureau of Security made it a point to continually flash images of Bees wandering just beyond the walls of No.6, to remind citizens of what lied beyond their sight. Scrawling text below informed citizens to be thankful for the peaceful world they lived in. Shion would never say so to his mother, but he supposed the citizens of No.6 had merely traded one monster for another—the Bees for the officials in charge of No.6’s government.

 

Karan’s face darkened every time a Bee’s image flashed across the screen. She and Shion never spoke of it. In their large house, tucked safely away in Chronos, one of No.6’s larger residential districts, the low groans of the Bees wandering outside couldn’t be heard. Karan never mentioned the word “Bee” in the house, and Shion never asked why her expression changed when their terrifying images appeared on the screen.

 

Shion had never seen a Bee in person, but he supposed Karan most likely had. His mother had been a young woman during the First Strike—the night when the world ended. No.6 and the other five city-states came about as an answer to the sudden onslaught of reanimated corpses. There were cities outside No.6, outside all of the districts, and Shion wondered what each of them looked like.

 

Karan had probably lost someone during the First Strike. In the mass hysteria of the world crumbling away, her whole world had come crashing down around her. Or perhaps it had something to do with Shion’s father; the man he had never met.

 

The man Karan refused to talk about.

 

Shion remembered nothing of his life before age four. His oldest memory was of his mother, long hair tied out of her face, mixing flour and cherries into a large mixing bowl. There was no need for such actions, not when food came to them so readily in Chronos, but Karan enjoyed baking. And she was good at it. He wanted to ask her if she’d wanted to be a baker before the Strike, but could never work up the courage.

 

When he confided his concerns to Safu, she nodded slowly. “My grandmother doesn’t like Bees, either. She lost her husband—my grandfather—that night.”

 

“Maybe my mom doesn’t want to talk about my dad,” Shion had suggested quietly, “because he turned into a Bee.”

 

Safu had shrugged her bony shoulders and her dark eyes flickered. “How would he have died then? You were born four years after the First Strike began. Your father would have to have been alive for that. And hasn’t your family always lived in No.6?”

 

Shion peered out the window, watching the rain pelting through the tree branches, and wanting nothing more than to throw it open. The glass was weather-proofed and almost impossible to shatter. The temperature in his bedroom was regulated to ensure that the temperature remained the same, regardless of the chill outside. It made Shion sick to his stomach.

 

 _Throw open the window_ , chanted a voice low in his ear. _Take a break from normalcy_. The storm had come as a birthday present, after all. Naturally Shion should have the right to throw open the window and take it all in.

 

Shion closed his eyes and took a moment to consider his options. He should do his homework. He had an image to keep up, if he had any hopes of remaining eligible for the Gifted Program. But at the same time, the crushing weight of No.6 was killing him. He felt the same way he did in his nightmares—trapped in darkness, unable to breathe, terrified for his life, surrounded on all sides by slathering mouths and crippling moans and crimson eyes bearing into him—

 

The stench of decay struck him in the face. It was worse than it had been at school. The rotting smell grasped him around the throat and suffocated him. Shion clawed at his throat, gasping. He had to get out of here. He had to escape!

 

Clawing his way toward the window, Shion’s hands found the handles. He grasped the sturdy brass, pulling with all his might—and the window blasted open.

 

Wind sliced through his hair, violent blades fluttering through tendrils of auburn. Raindrops whipped into his eyes, but Shion rushed out to the railing. The scent of petrichor and fresh dirt struck him, shattering the smell of decay. He grasped the railing, the slick metal sliding beneath his palms. Feeling the water pouring around him, the wind pulling at his hair and his clothes, something feral bubbled up from deep inside him.

 

And in the midst of the storm, standing in the middle of No.6, surrounded on all sides by high walls and the clacking teeth of flesh-devouring monsters, Shion screamed.

 

**~ * ~ * ~ * ~**

 

Biting back the taste of blood, Nezumi slipped through the small bars surrounding a carefully tended garden. The stealthy change might have been difficult for an adult, but Nezumi’s small size made it seem like little more than child’s play.

 

His shoulder ached, and his hand hurt from pressing down to staunch the bleeding. Traveling with an injury was difficult enough on its own. Factoring in an injury that refused to stop seeping blood proved to be much worse.

 

Rain danced around him, its cooling water easing some of the burn. It hadn’t been raining before he’d slipped through the enormous crack in the side of the Impervious City’s walls. Nezumi took it as a sign from whatever god or goddess resided above that he was meant to survive. The heavy rainfall had certainly made it difficult for the patrolling servicemen to spot him.

 

Stepping directly into the garden, ignorant of whatever growing sprouts his bare feet may have been squashing into the muck, Nezumi drew in a deep breath. The air tasted like freedom—the lingering smell of ozone, the cool metallic kiss of an autumn storm, and the boiling sensation of blood seeping through his fingers.

 

He was alive.

 

Pausing to catch his breath, Nezumi took a moment to glance around the garden. It was carefully tended: a small eight-by-three enclosure surrounded on all sides by smooth white stones. A few sprouts peaked through the sopping ground. Small mounds of dirt had been gathered and released, as if a child had slipped out into the storm and buried his hands into the muck. Certainly not an activity that would have been approved of by the men and women of the Privileged City.

 

Nezumi exhaled in disgust. Twelve years on Earth, living in the shadow of No.6, had given him a healthy dislike for the city and its close-minded citizens.

 

A droplet of rainwater struck the open wound on his left shoulder, catapulting him back into reality. He needed something to stop the bleeding. Aluminum salt would have been best, but he doubted it would be in supply throughout No.6. He vaguely remembered Gran, before her recent passing, informing him that it was “too filthy for the citizens of _that_ haven.”

 

Dizziness overcame him. His knees buckled, and had he been a weaker person, he might have crumpled to the ground. _Would that be such a bad thing?_ he wondered. To sink to the ground, curl up, and wait for the inevitable end?

 

He shook his head. Blood loss had brought about these dangerous thoughts. He needed to find something to close his wound, and quickly.

 

And besides, Nezumi reluctantly admitted, being in No.6 could not possibly be worse than running into _that Bee_ again.

 

Nezumi took a shaking step forward, and nearly collapsed face-first into the mud. Gritting his teeth and trying hard to ignore the fuzzy black spots building in front of his eyes, he took another step. Through the rain he could make out the shape of a small, white house. It might not have been ideal, but he needed shelter if he was going to survive the night.

 

Another few steps took him out of the garden, and he hurried across the small yard. The white house was by no means fancy, compared to the arrangement of buildings decorating No.6. Nezumi spotted a little porch, a second-floor deck that he could huddle beneath. He wouldn’t be warm, but he would be dry. The heavy smell of rain would wash away the blood tracing its way through No.6. If that Bee came after him—if No.6 had the _balls_ to release that shrieking monstrosity inside the confines of their perfect city—the rain would likely distort his trail.

 

Nezumi made it another half meter before his bare feet struck a particularly slippery patch of mud. He went down, hard, hands flying out to catch himself. The impact jarred his shoulder; Nezumi hissed. Blood poured down his arm.

 

And just as he struck the ground, the door to the balcony banged open.

 

Nezumi snapped his head up and stared. Tendrils of wet hair stuck to his face like the legs of a fat, gray spider. He watched, silent and still, as a small figure darted across the length of the second floor balcony and came to a halt at the edge.

 

For a heartbreaking moment, Nezumi thought he’d been spotted. Whoever this was, they had seen him lurking in the garden, seen him stumbling—and now the Security Bureau would be upon him. That Bee would come back; its clacking, blood-smeared teeth would sink into him, its long claws ripping into his stomach, dragging out his intestines and leaving him to rot in the muck. Quick and painful—dead. Nezumi’s fists curled into the dirt.

 

The figure loomed over him, and Nezumi peered at him. It was a child, he noted. Around the same age as him, short auburn hair, pale skin. Ordinary, in every sense of the word. Delicate, like every other member of No.6. A sheep in the flock.

 

The boy grasped the railing and leaned over; Nezumi watched a small black hole open on the boy’s face, his mouth opening—and then the boy shouted. It was a loud, sharp, sudden sound, and every hair on Nezumi’s body stood on end. It wasn’t so much a scream as a piercing howl. The wind tore at it, scattering it about. No one in No.6 would hear it. But to Nezumi, closeby, the boy’s shout echoed in the same manner as the Chained One’s shrieks had moments before East Block had fallen.

 

The Chained One’s screams had promised death and destruction; but this scream promised something else. A glimmer of hope flashed through Nezumi. He pushed himself up off the ground, gritting his teeth against the burning pain in his shoulder. He wasn’t going to die—not here.

 

**~ * ~ * ~ * ~**

 

Raindrops flew into Shion’s throat as he screamed. He tasted the storm. He threw his arms out to catch the falling rain, reveling in the way his clothes clung to his body. It was all so perfect. For a moment, in the midst of the storm, he could forget everything about No.6.

 

And then his moment was interrupted by a loud, mechanical chirping sound. Shion lowered his arms and glared over his shoulder at the open window. The temperature inside the room was dropping at an alarming rate. If he did nothing about the alarm, the window would lock and restore the room to its warm temperature. Everything in the room would be dried instantly.

 

Shion sighed and hurried back to his room. He wanted the moment to last. He wiped his face, dripping with rainwater, on the fluttering curtains. He marched over to the alarm system, singing its aggravating little song, and punched in his identification number.

 

The alarm gave a final little chirp and stopped singing. Shion took in a deep breath, smelling the rain. All he wanted was a break from the norm. A chance to forget that he lived inside a carefully controlled cage. Shion turned back toward the window.

 

A boy stood in between the fluttering curtains. Shion sucked in a sharp gasp through his teeth. The boy was the same height as him, with slate-colored hair falling around his shoulders in wet clumps. Shion couldn’t see his face; his eyes zeroed in on the fat patch of crimson smeared over the boy’s left shoulder.

 

For a moment, Shion thought of his nightmares. The boy—tied back gray hair glimmering in the dim light, thin black-clad body slicing through a horde of Bees. The person standing in front of him was something from a dream. Shion reached a hand out to him, eyes focused on the wound. He needed to stop the bleeding. He’d never seen someone in real life bleeding as profusely as the boy in front of him was, but he knew he had to stop it soon, or else the boy wouldn’t survive.

 

His hand moved slowly, and the boy vanished. Shion reeled back—convinced it was all just a hallucination. He saw a flicker of movement at his right, and when he turned, something heavy collided with him. He stumbled back against the wall with a grunt; something cold and hard wrapped around his throat, holding him in place.

 

Shion’s fingers were numb, his breath coming out in strangled puffs. He could hardly feel the weight of the boy’s frail hand on his throat, pushing just hard enough to surprise. He peered into the boy’s pale eyes. They were a color he had never seen on any human—a sort of silencing gray that mimicked the dark clouds that had rolled overhead earlier in the evening.

 

The boy could not have been much older than Shion was—his heart-shaped face had a firmness to it that only the youth possessed, and though his slate-gray hair seemed filthy in the shadows, it fell around his shoulders with little damage.

 

Shion might have been afraid, had the circumstances been normal. It was clear to him that the boy was most likely a street urchin who had crawled inside his bedroom, seeking shelter from the storm. _That’s the price I pay for leaving my window uncovered_.

 

Something had caught his eye the moment he spotted the street urchin: blood. Plenty of it. The left sleeve of the boy’s tunic was slathered in the stuff, and from the way the hand around his throat wavered, Shion imagined the injury still hurt quite a bit. He’d nearly forgotten about the boy’s injury; it had been what had caused Shion to lower his guard.

 

“Don’t move,” the street urchin hissed, and Shion immediately felt something warm bubble beneath his ribcage.

 

In an instant, all his fears had been blown away, like the flame of a dying candle. The emptiness this action left behind was immediately filled with something Shion had hardly felt before; he wouldn’t call it pity, not in the slightest, but this feeling...he had no word for it.

 

Shion set his jaw. He raised his head, pulling himself from the stunned stupor he’d been lulled into. “I have some basic knowledge of medicine,” he whispered, his voice faltering as the hand tightened around his throat. “It’s not—I’m not all that great at it, but I can help…”

 

The bleeding boy’s eyes narrowed, his lips pressing into a thin line. Shion counted the beads of sweat that formed on his forehead, noticed the pallor of his cheeks.

 

“You’re hurt,” Shion said. He kept his voice low and coaxing. “Aren’t you? Let me help.”

 

For the briefest of moments, Shion and the boy stood in absolute silence. Shion swallowed. God only knew what had happened to the poor thing out there. There was no way the boy could have been from No.6. He must have come from one of the outer districts, and beyond the protective walls of the city, there were dark creatures—so willing to cause harm to whatever crossed their path. Had it been possible that this boy had happened upon one of them?

 

Slowly, the boy withdrew his hand from Shion’s throat. Shion took in several deep breaths, raising his hand to lay flat across his breast. He had expected his heart to be hammering from the ordeal, but it was gentle beneath his palm.

 

He gestured to the floor, and the bleeding boy slowly crouched on it. His eyes remained set on Shion as he wandered to the other end of the room. It hadn’t been a lie that he had little skill with medicine, but he’d never had to deal with suturing a living person before.

 

Shion turned back to the boy, opened his mouth to assure him everything would be fine—and then his mom’s voice filtered in through his room’s intercom system: “ _Shion?_ ”

 

The bleeding boy on the floor bolted upright at the sound. His silver eyes flashed to every corner of the room, unable to locate the source. His hands tightened into fists, his body tensed and ready to leap. Shion held up a hand, silently urging the boy to relax, and then hurried over to the panel on the wall. He pressed a button and replied, “Yeah, Mom?”

 

“ _Is your window open?_ ”

 

“My window…?” Shion had nearly forgotten. He looked over his shoulder at the fluttering curtains. He’d turned off the alarm system, so the window hadn’t closed on its own. Oh. “Um, yeah, it is. Sorry, Mom. I’ll close it right away.” He punched in a short code—03145-A17—and the windows closed on their own. The room would warm up in a few moments, and then he and the bleeding boy would be instantly dried. That would be best; the bleeding boy would catch a cold otherwise.

 

He turned to go back to the bleeding boy, but suddenly remembered something. He pressed the intercom button again. “Hey, Mom? I have a report to work on, so could you leave me alone for a bit?”

 

“ _A report?_ ” His mom’s voice sounded just a bit skeptical. “ _Those Gifted Courses are really keeping you busy, aren’t they?_ ”

 

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

 

Karan’s laugh filtered through the intercom. “ _All right, well, don’t overwork yourself, honey. Come down when dinner’s ready_.”

 

“OK.” Shion hung up the intercom, but punched in another code—665-C5-01. The security system would remain offline. If he didn’t, the system would pick up on anyone in the house not wearing an Identification Bracelet. He didn’t know for certain, but he doubted the bleeding boy, crouched on the floor, had access to an ID. Otherwise, he probably would have gone to a hospital instead of breaking into houses.

 

Warm air began to filter in through the ventilation system. The bleeding boy let out a long, deep sigh and sunk low to the ground. Shion hurried over to snatch up the first aid kit he kept tucked in the corner of his room, as well as a small collection of needles and some thin, black thread.

 

Shion came over to the boy and crouched down at his left side. He reached out a hand, noticed the way the boy’s silver eyes flickered, and paused. “Um, I need to, uh…” Shion licked his lips, suddenly nervous. “Is it OK if I move your sleeve out of the way? I, um, I can’t see what I’m dealing with.”

 

The silver-eyed intruder turned his face away. “Rip it off, for all I care.” The boy’s voice was a low, harsh rasp.

 

Shion swallowed and nodded. He took a small pair of scissors from the first aid kit and delicately cut away the long, blood-soaked sleeve hiding the boy’s injury. Pushing away the fabric, Shion got his first look at the source of the bleeding: a shallow groove in the flesh of the shoulder joint. It wasn’t deep by any real means, but blood welled up and poured out.

 

Shion pressed his lips together in a thin line. He would need stitches. It wouldn’t stop on its own. Taking in a deep, calming breath, Shion placed the tips of his fingers on the boy’s forearm.

 

There was a question burning in the back of his mind. He knew he needed to ask. The answer would determine whether or not there was anything he could do to help him. “Um...You’re not from No.6, are you?” It wasn’t the question he wanted to ask—not the one he _needed_ to ask—but it came out all the same.

 

“Tch—no.”

 

“Then, uh...You’re from outside the walls.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

It was a casual answer, but cold shivers danced up Shion’s spine. He gently extracted his fingers from the boy’s arm, laying them on his lap. He took a deep breath, peered into the boy’s face, seeking out his eyes, and in a calm voice, asked, “Did a Bee...do this to you?”

 

The boy’s silver eyes flickered to catch Shion’s own. “Yes.”

 

It was a simple answer. Shion’s blood ran cold. He pressed his palms to the ground. He’d never seen a Bee in person, but information about them was shoved down their throats each day. Bee bites were poisonous. From the moment their teeth pierced flesh, the fate of the victim was sealed.

 

Death. Painful, horrid, feverish death—and then, minutes after the heart stopped beating and the breath stilled, the body would reanimate, and in the wake of the victimized human would be a monstrous, slathering Bee.

 

The boy understood Shion’s sudden change in body language. His expression softened. “It’s not a bite.” He glanced down at his wounded shoulder, at the blood welling up, and nodded to it. “Too clean a cut. This came from a chain.”

 

“A...chain?”

 

The boy flashed him a sarcastic smile. It chilled Shion to the bone. “Prisoners in life, prisoners in death. This place isn’t the paradise you think it is.”

 

Shion frowned, wanting nothing more than to assure the boy he agreed with him. But he was already in trouble for allowing the boy into his room. He should have called the Security Bureau the moment he saw an unidentified person in his room. That’s what a good citizen would have done. Shion closed his eyes. Forget that now. He had a job to do.

 

He poured a generous amount of antiseptic on a gauze pad and applied it to the wound. The boy sucked in a hiss through his teeth, hand clenching into a fist. Shion murmured an apology, watching as the gauze pad turned red. The boy glanced around the room, eyes lingering on the awards framed on his wall, the scraps of paper announcing him as one of those eligible for the Gifted Curriculum. “So,” he said, “you’re part of No.6’s Gifted Course, then?”

 

“Huh? Oh, yeah.”

 

“Hmph, impressive.” There was a sarcastic tone to his raspy voice, but Shion didn’t take it to heart. He took the boy’s injured arm in between his hands and leaned in close, eyeballing the wound.

 

“You aren’t making fun of me, are you?”

 

“What—and insult the person treating me? Huh. Wouldn’t dream of it.”

 

Shion rolled his eyes and searched around inside his first aid kit. Although he wasn’t an expert on suturing and medicine, it wasn’t uncommon for even the least privileged citizen to carry local anesthetic. Injuries in No.6 weren’t common, but on the off chance something terrible happened, each citizen was expected to be prepared.

 

He pulled the syringe out. Something in his expression must have changed, because the silver boy scooched back on the floor and raised his right arm up to block himself. “H—hey! What are you doing?”

 

“What does it look like? I’m going to numb it.”

 

“Numb it?” The boy’s silver eyes widened. “Are you serious?”

 

Shion blinked. “How else am I going to stitch it?”

 

“ _Stitch_ it?” The boy gave a strangled laugh and shook his head. Strands of hair fluttered around his shoulders, completely dry. No longer darkened by rainwater, Shion could see it for the color it truly was: a lovely shade of blue-gray, like the sky right before a storm. “Geez, you’re something else, aren’t you?”

 

Shion flushed at the comment. It had to be an insult. He was sure of it. He had no experience with this sort of thing, only a basic understanding of what to do.

 

Shion looked the boy in the eye as he applied the anesthetic to three points around the wound. The boy made a slight grunting sound at each injection. Shion continued to look at him. His lips were thin, bloodless. Cheeks hollow, dark circles beneath the eyes. He hadn’t lived a good life. Shion felt a pang of sympathy for him. And yet he couldn’t bring himself to pity the boy.

 

He’d come from beyond the wall, and he was living. A living, breathing human. That was far more than the stumbling men and women lurking in the forests, scraping through the world with cold, dead hands, seeing all of the world without being able to acknowledge it.

 

“You’re a strange kid,” said the boy. He peered down at the hand resting politely on his forearm. Shion wondered if the anesthetic had begun to take effect. He’d give it another few minutes. “You haven’t even asked for my name.”

 

“Oh, yeah. I guess I haven’t.” Shion smiled at him.

 

The boy narrowed his eyes. Shion looked away from him and over to the intricate molding along his walls. The wind continued to beat against the windows; Shion swallowed down the urge to throw them open again. But the cold air would be terrible for the boy’s injuries. The last thing he needed was to get sick on top of being injured.

 

Shion threaded the needle he would be using to stitch up the wound. It took a moment of intense focus, but he had the thread situated before turning back to see the boy was staring at him. His brow furrowed with confusion, and only then did Shion realize he hadn’t asked for the boy’s name, even after being prompted. “Oh, yeah—what is it? Your name?”

 

“Nezumi.”

 

That wasn’t at all what Shion was expecting. He really didn’t know what he’d been expecting the boy’s name to be. Daisuke or Rei or Koharu. Something simple. Not...that. His expression must have reflected this, because the bleeding boy—Nezumi—shrugged his uninjured shoulder.

 

“Nezumi?” Shion’s voice rose at the end of the name, a question lingering.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“That...doesn’t sound right.”

 

“Doesn’t matter, that’s what it is.”

 

Shion pressed his lips together. “Then you’re a bounty hunter?” Every week, the Bureau of Security released an updated document listing the names of every bounty hunter registered in the database. Men and women, contracted by the government or acting on their own, charged with the task of seeking out dangerous Bees and silencing them. Those who were registered as deceased had thick, black X’s drawn across their faces.

 

Bounty hunters tended to have odd names—codenames, nicknames. _Nezumi_ sounded like one such name; it wasn’t uncommon for bounty hunters to take on the names of animals. The boy looked way too young to be a registered bounty hunter; Shion hadn’t seen him in the database, although the newest update wasn’t due until later in the evening.

 

Nezumi closed his eyes with a short, barking laugh. “Me, a bounty hunter? Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just my name. Don’t read so much into it.”

 

“OK,” Shion murmured. “Well, my name’s—”

 

“Shion, right?” At Shion’s surprised look, Nezumi jerked his head toward the intercom panel. “That’s what your mother called you, wasn’t it? After the flower?”

 

“Yeah, my mom loves wildflowers.”

 

“Hmm.”

 

They lapsed into a comfortable silence, and Shion set about focusing on the task at hand. What did he remember about stitching? First he had to set down two or three stable threads, using them to hold the wound close as he finished the suture. It had to be done quickly and carefully. Nezumi wouldn’t feel it, but that didn’t mean Shion couldn’t cause more damage.

 

His fingers trembled as he threaded the needle through the injury. Nezumi’s irises watched each movement of his hands, the sharp point of the needle puncturing through flesh and sealing the injury. He didn’t flinch, didn’t look away. The intense focus he placed on Shion’s suture work made him flush with embarrassment; what if he screwed it up? Had the injury had enough time to be numbed? Did Shion add enough disinfectant, or was Nezumi at risk of getting sick?

 

It ended much quicker than Shion imagined. Suture complete, he pressed a fresh piece of gauze to the injury and applied just a slight amount of pressure. He’d give it a moment, then bandage it. His breath came out in short, nervous puffs, but he felt excited. He’d never had the opportunity to apply what he’d learned into the real world before.

 

It was a nice, clean stitch. With enough care and time, the injury would heal as if it’d never been there. And if it hadn’t been a bite, Nezumi would continue to survive. Shion’s heart sank. At least, so long as the Security Bureau didn’t find him.

 

Nezumi’s forehead beaded with sweat, and his cheeks looked paler than before. Shion’s chest tightened. “A—are you all right?”

 

“Fine.” Nezumi lowered his gaze. “Don’t worry about it.”

 

Shion set about bandaging the wound, quickly and diligently. He thought back to the lessons he’d been given about Bee bites. Fever could be a sign of an infection. He reached a hand out, intent on pressing it against Nezumi’s forehead. He’d said it was due to chains, but...what kind of Bee had chains? Maybe the fever caused by a bite had made Nezumi remember it wrong? And if he’d actually been bitten, then nothing Shion could do would rescue him.

 

Just as the tips of his fingers brushed Nezumi’s bangs, Nezumi rose to his feet. It was a sudden movement that made Shion reel back. Nezumi’s eyes flashed, darting from the window to the other side of Shion’s room, where his bed sat nestled up a tiny flight of stairs.

 

“Um,” said Shion, slowly getting to his feet. “Do you...do you want to lay down?”

 

He kept his distance, and Nezumi must have noticed. He stepped around Shion, heading for the bed. Just before ascending the steps, he glanced over and leveled Shion with a firm glare. “It _isn’t_ a bite.”

 

And somehow Shion believed him. He had no reason to believe this stranger—this person who’d snuck into his room in the middle of a storm, who’d clearly broken into No.6—but he nodded.

 

Satisfied with that, Nezumi climbed the stairs and vanished. His clothes and hair had been dried by the air control system in the room, but he was still covered in blood and dirt. “Please change your clothes before you get into bed. I’ll bring you up something.”

 

Shion picked out something for Nezumi to change into—a loose pair of lounge pants, and the thick, purple sweater Safu’s grandmother had made for him for his birthday. With the storm thundering outside, Nezumi would probably appreciate something warm to change into. The sweater was the warmest thing he had; he’d turn up the heat in his bedroom, too.

 

Shion folded the clothes and took them over to the staircase. He wondered what to do with Nezumi’s clothes. The white shirt was completely ruined. Stained in blood, missing a sleeve—no way to salvage it. Shion frowned. He’d probably have to trash it. He didn’t know the first thing about washing out bloodstains, and he could probably stitch the sleeve back on, but he didn’t think Nezumi would want him to.

 

Nezumi stood next to the bed, clutching the hem of the ruined white shirt. He studied Shion with narrow-eyed suspicion; as Shion set the pile of clothes down on the bed, Nezumi’s expression softened.

 

“What should I do with what you’re wearing now?” Shion gestured to Nezumi’s clothes.

 

“Trash ‘em,” said Nezumi.

 

Shion figured that would probably be the case. He pressed his lips together and nodded. He muttered under his breath—something he barely paid attention to—and left Nezumi standing next to his bed. He heard the familiar rustle of fabric being discarded, feet pressing into the carpets. He heard Nezumi pick up the sweater, and he heard an odd chuckle. “The same color you’re named after, huh?”

 

“My friend made it for me,” Shion remarked.

 

“Friend, huh?” Nezumi’s voice took on a conspiratorial tone. “ _Just_ a friend?”

 

Shion blushed. “W—what else would she be?”

 

“Oh—ho! A present from a girl! Aren’t you lucky?”

 

Shion whirled around to glare up the stairs at him. “Y’know, you’re kind of—” In the dim lighting surrounding his bed, he caught sight of Nezumi’s bare back. A long sheet of marble, marked with dried bits of blood. Stretching from the middle of his right shoulder blade down to the center of his back, a raised, brown mark marred the perfection of Nezumi’s spine. Shion’s tongue felt heavy in his mouth.

 

He’d never seen a burn in real life, either, but he’d seen enough pictures. It nearly consumed Nezumi’s back, and although it appeared healed over, Shion felt a pang of sympathy shoot through him.

 

Nezumi turned and leveled him with an intense stare. Storm gray eyes bore into his own; Shion saw a fire crackling behind them, something he’d never seen in the eyes of the citizens of No.6. The boy standing in front of him was alive. In a way the men and women of the walled city could never hope to be.

 

“What is it?” asked Nezumi, yanking the purple sweater over his head, effectively ending Shion’s view of the burn marks on his spine.

 

“O—oh, uh, nothing.” Shion turned away. He wanted to ask about the burn marks, but that would be rude. If Nezumi had really wanted to tell him about it—but what reason would he have for doing that? He and Shion didn’t know each other. Not really.

 

 _Distraction. Just need a distraction_. Shion moved his hands in front of himself, trying to navigate in the darkness of his room. He’d left the small light on, but its dim glow did little to help him now. Feeling his hands across the wall, he reached for the light-control panel.

 

“ _Don't!_ ”

 

Nezumi’s voice stopped him cold. Shion reeled from the panel, hand outstretched. Heart pounding, he shot a glare to the darkened loft and grumbled, a clear indication of _why not?_

 

But Nezumi didn’t answer. Shion couldn’t see his dark shape anymore; he’d probably sat on the bed or settled under the covers. He supposed he could have disobeyed—Nezumi hadn’t asked _politely_. But something stirred in his core, and Shion walked by the panel without so much as a second glance.

 

The sky outside had darkened considerably. The room was lighter in the far corner, where the lamp continued to flicker. Shion wondered if Nezumi had a headache, and perhaps that had to do with his desire for less light. He clicked the lamp off, suddenly plunged into gray darkness. He could barely maneuver his way around his room like this, but he’d make due. From up in the loft, he heard Nezumi emit a pleased groan.

 

Shion’s stomach growled, and he figured it was time to head down and grab some dinner. Nezumi was probably hungry, too. He wandered over to the bedroom door, murmuring a quiet, “I’ll be right back.” He didn’t know if Nezumi heard him. The dark loft remained silent.

 

**~ * ~ * ~ * ~**

 

“The update has arrived,” Karan called over her shoulder as Shion stepped into the kitchen. “Make sure you read it over.”

 

Shion plopped down at the dinner table. His mother had already set his plate—a bowl of homemade stew and a slice of cherry cake. A mug of hot chocolate waited for him. Shion smiled. Nothing compared to his mother’s cooking. Spooning the stew into his mouth, Shion mumbled, “Anything new?”

 

“Not especially,” said Karan. She leaned against the counter. Her long brown hair was tied back in a loose bun, and she wore a simple purple shirt and slacks. His mother didn’t like to dress fancy. She said it made her feel like too much of a snob. “A few new bounty hunters have joined the register, that’s all.” Karan only ever talked about bounty hunters when it came to the database updates—Shion would have to check the Bee roster on his own time.

 

In addition to the list of every bounty hunter registered, the database held information about particularly deadly Bees. While most Bees tended to be fairly generic, there were a few that stood out based on location and clothing—dangerous beasts who’d managed to take down a series of bounty hunters, or make a name for themselves, despite having no mind of their own. The West Block Bride. Lord Blackwater. The Crawling Death. Shion had seen them all in the databases; unlike bounty hunters, when a particularly dangerous Bee had been eradicated, its profile was completely erased from the database.

 

Shion ate the rest of his dinner in silence. Karan walked over to the small television and clicked it on. A pretty redheaded woman in a neatly pressed pantsuit stood in front of the camera, rambling on about someone who’d been spotted close to Lost Town.

 

Shion frowned. Lost Town was the lowest part of No.6, where the "lesser class" lived. He and Karan had originally lived in Lost Town, when Shion was an infant—or so Karan had said. Due to Shion’s high IQ tests as a young child, he’d been granted an opportunity to advance to the elite courses and, as such, had been able to move himself and his mother to a comfortable home in Chronos.

 

He couldn’t remember the little apartment in Lost Town. His mother spoke fondly of it, remarking that it had been a tiny slice of heaven in a world that’d come crashing down. Sometimes Shion felt bad for taking her away from such a place.

 

He’d confided this to Safu, several years ago. She’d looked at him as if he’d sprouted a second head. “Why would you want to live in Lost Town?” she’d demanded. “Chronos is reserved for the best of the best! You should consider yourself lucky!”

 

Shion was just contemplating how much stew to bring up to Nezumi—did he have much of an appetite?—when Karan made a surprised, choking sound. Shion turned to ask her what was wrong, and found himself staring at an image of Nezumi on the television.

 

There was no mistake. The boy on the screen had the same hair, cropped to his shoulders, and the stormy gray eyes Shion had never seen on any other human being. The blond woman announced, “ _VC103221 was spotted near Lost Town earlier today. He is believed to be injured. Anyone with any information should contact the Bureau of Security immediately_.”

 

Shion pressed his lips together to stifle a gasp. VC. _Violent criminal_. He thought back to the boy resting in his bed upstairs. Could it be possible? Nezumi didn’t look a day older than him. How on earth had a twelve year old kid earned the title of VC?

 

He turned to say something to his mother about it, without mentioning that the criminal on the news just so happened to be upstairs in his bedroom, but Karan’s expression stopped him. Her eyes, blown wide with shock, stared at the television screen. Her lips moved in silent whispers; when Shion focused, he thought he caught the words, “That’s impossible. You died.”

 

“Mom?”

 

Karan turned to stare at him, and Shion reeled. His mother’s expression had hardened to something akin to rage; her irises flickered like daggers, her lip curled in a sneer. He’d never seen this look on her face.

 

In an instant, it was gone. Karan blinked, and the terrifying expression vanished. She put a hand to her head and flashed Shion a trembling smile. “Sorry about that, sweetie. What is it?”

 

Questions died in his throat: what had that expression been about? What had she meant by “you died”? Did she somehow know Nezumi, and if so, how? But he couldn’t ask them. So he just shook his head, picked up his empty dishes, and murmured that he’d be getting seconds and bringing them to his room. Karan nodded and went back to watching the news.

 

Shion quickly threw together another cup of hot chocolate for Nezumi, a bowl of stew, and another slice of cherry cake. He grabbed a tray and set the dishes on top, placing his half-finished cup of hot chocolate next to Nezumi’s. He glanced over his shoulder to see if Karan had noticed him taking a second mug—but she was too busy watching the television, eyes glued on the image of Nezumi’s blank expression.

 

**~ * ~ * ~ * ~**

 

Shion returned to the bedroom without a sound, pressing the door closed with his hip. Balancing the tray on his forearm, he grasped the railing leading up to the loft and ascended. The mugs rattled. Shion heard blankets shift; at the sound of him coming up the stairs, Nezumi poked his head up from the mattress. He hadn’t been underneath the covers.

 

Shion held the tray out like an offering. Nezumi sat up slowly, slate-colored hair falling around his shoulders. In the dim lighting, Shion couldn’t tell what sort of expression he had on his face. He vaguely wondered if Nezumi would really mind if he went down and turned on a light.

 

Setting the tray on the bed, in front of Nezumi’s bent knees, Shion perched on the edge. He gestured for Nezumi to take the food; Nezumi reaches out with skilled hands in the dark, snatches up the mug, and brings it to his lips.

 

“You can see in the dark?” asks Shion.

 

“Of course I can,” says Nezumi. “I’m nocturnal, after all.” He takes a sip of the hot chocolate, pauses, and then downs half the mug in a single gulp. Shion flinches—how can he _do_ that? The heat doesn’t seem to bother Nezumi in the slightest; he exhales and sets the mug on the tray. “Damn. Not bad.”

 

Shion shrugs. “It’s instant.”

 

Nezumi snorts. “Fancy.”

 

“Only the best for my honored guest,” Shion says seriously, and when Nezumi gives him a silent look, Shion’s lips quirk into a smile. Nezumi catches on with his joke and makes a sound low in his throat that might have been a laugh.

 

Silence fell in the room again. Nezumi picked up the bowl of stew and went about eating. Shion squinted in the darkness. He could barely make out the angular bones in Nezumi’s cheeks, or the way his silver eyes flashed. He ate quickly. Always on the alert. Always ready for danger. Shion wanted to reach out and comfort him, assure him nothing bad would happen to him here.

 

But something itched at him. His mother’s expression. The pictures of Nezumi on the news. Shion’s lips were moving and forming words before he could stop them. “VC103221…”

 

In the darkness, he saw Nezumi freeze with the spoon halfway to his mouth.

 

“You were on the news.”

 

Nezumi set the spoon down on the tray. “Was I?”

 

Shion picked up his mug of hot chocolate and sipped it casually. He looks out the window, at the wind rattling the impenetrable glass. He can see Nezumi out the corner of his eye; every muscle in his body tenses. Shion’s skill feels strangely warm—like he’s feeling sunlight for the first time. Suddenly, Nezumi doesn’t feel like some intruder in his home, or even a guest. He feels like a friend, but not like Safu. Something...something precious, that he doesn’t want to let go of.

 

“How’s the stew?” asked Shion.

 

“I—what?” He saw Nezumi relax his shoulders, and heard the clink of the spoon as he picked it up. “It’s—fine. Good. It’s good.”

 

“Hmm. Good.” Shion took another sip of his hot chocolate. It’d cooled down enough to no longer be considered hot anymore, but he reveled in the comforting taste.

 

He let Nezumi finished eating before bombarding him with more questions. “You live outside No.6, right? So, does that mean you’ve seen Bees?”

 

“Up close and personal.” Nezumi pushed the tray away and Shion, afraid it would get knocked over, set it safely down on the floor next to his dangling feet. “You never have.” It wasn’t a question. “You live inside the walls of the _perfect city_ —you’re protected from all the big, bad monsters. I’ll bet you know all about them, though, don’t you? They pump you elites full of useless information you’ll never use, just so you can call yourselves experts on things you’d never hope to understand.” Nezumi snorts, inelegantly, and flops over onto his back. It jars his shoulder, and Shion winces in sympathy. “Whatever you read about in your little books—whatever you think you know about those things—it’s nothing compared to reality.”

 

“You don’t have to insult me, you know,” Shion mumbled.

 

“No, I suppose not.” Nezumi shifted on the bed to stare up at Shion. “It’s not as perfect as you think it is. The city isn’t a safe haven. There are monsters worse than Bees living inside.”

 

For a moment, Shion thought to his nightmares. Surrounded on all sides by the maws of Bees, ripping and tearing into his flesh, injecting him with parasites and poison, killing him. How can monsters worse than that exist? And yet, he knew it to be true. The government—the elites—trapping everyone inside the city. Searching for the slightest sign that someone was a traitor. Shion knew he’d be dragged to the Correctional Facility for letting Nezumi in his room. He lowered his head and mumbled, “I know.”

 

Nezumi went quiet, and Shion couldn’t see him. In the expanse of darkness stretching out before him, he couldn’t sense Nezumi at all.

 

"You're strange," said Nezumi, his voice suddenly quiet.

 

Shion chuckled. “Am I?”

 

"Of course you are. You know? That's not something a super elite should. Aren't you going to get in trouble if the authorities find out?"

 

"Yeah. I suppose so."

 

"You took in an escaped VC and didn't report it to the Security Bureau. If they find out, you’re going to be in a hell of a lot more trouble than just questioning the 'will of the city'. They're not gonna let you off easily."

 

“Probably not.”

 

Nezumi’s hand darted out of the darkness, grasping Shion’s forearm. Thin fingers dug into his skin, hard enough to hurt. “You’re not serious, right? I mean, it's not my problem if something happens to you, but if you end up being banished to the forests, I wouldn't like that.”

 

Shion gave him a small, sad smile. “That’s nice of you. Thanks.”

 

Nezumi slowly extracted his fingers from Shion’s forearm. He ran his hand through his hair with a frustrated sigh. “Yeah, well, I guess I’m lucky you’re such a strange kid.” He touched his left shoulder, tracing the tips of his fingers over the bandages beneath.

 

“Nezumi,” asked Shion, scooting on the bed until his knees bumped against Nezumi’s. He felt the boy shift so their skin wasn’t touching, and he tried not to feel insulted by the gesture. “How did you get into No.6? You couldn’t have come through the front gate, could you?”

 

“Of course not.”

 

“Then—you snuck in?”

 

“Obviously.”

 

“How?”

 

Nezumi’s fingers stilled on his injured shoulder. He lowered his gaze so he was little more than a dark shape in the center of the bed. “Something chased me.”

 

Shion’s throat felt thick. “Was it a...Bee?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“But Bees can’t move very fast.”

 

Nezumi gave a harsh, biting laugh. “Well, this one can. It’s not like the others.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

He flopped back on the bed and grasped at the sheets. He shifted so the blankets were pulled back. Shion recognized the motion—he was going to go to bed. “I’m not going to tell you,” said Nezumi. Shion made a noise of protest, but before he could demand an explanation, Nezumi snarled, “You’re probably going to get in big trouble for harboring me. If I told you about that Bee, you’d be in even _bigger_ trouble. Can you pretend you haven’t heard something once you’ve heard it? Could you lie to those officials and tell them with an honest smile that you didn’t know anything? You’re a smart kid, Shion—but you’re not an adult, and you’re in way over your head. Just forget about it.”

 

Shion sat back on the bed with a dejected sigh. Nezumi had a point. He couldn’t tell what he’d do if he was taken to the Correctional Facility for questioning. He wanted to know how Nezumi had been injured, or why a Bee would have chains, or how it could manage to chase down a human being, but if Nezumi didn’t want to talk about it—

 

“In return for not asking me, I won’t tell anybody about you screaming out the window.”

 

Shion’s face twisted into an embarrassed cross between fury and horror. He should have guessed he’d been spotted. Little time had passed between when he’d opened the window and Nezumi had snuck in, but he didn’t think anyone had actually _heard_ him. “I—I—I don’t—that is, um—I wasn’t—” He saw Nezumi’s shoulders quaking with repressed laughter.

 

“You really are a weird kid. I mean, who just throws open their bedroom window and screams like that?”

 

Shion’s lips drew back in what he hoped was a threatening snarl. Judging from the way Nezumi’s laughter increased, it hadn’t worked.

 

 _OK, then, time for plan B_. Furious and embarrassed at being laughed at, Shion threw himself at Nezumi. His arms wrapped around his waist and—and then he struck the pillow, face-first. His arms wrapped around nothing.

 

Nezumi stood on the bed, towering above him for half a moment, and then he moved. Shion felt hands on his arms, flipping him effortlessly onto his back. Nezumi dropped down on top of him, legs straddling Shion’s hips and pressing him into the mattress. Numb tingles shot from Shion’s hips to his toes. He gasped, and Nezumi spun the soup spoon around between his fingers. _Oh, when did he grab that? I didn’t even see him_.

 

He pressed the handle into the crook of Shion’s neck, running it along the jugular. Shion drew in a shaking breath, peering up into Nezumi’s face. Dark bangs fell into his eyes, transforming them into silver coins that dug into his soul. _Oh_ , Shion realized, feeling his face heat up, _he’s beautiful_. And he was. Shion had never seen anyone quite like this before.

 

“Tch—you can’t even protect yourself.” Nezumi bent down effortlessly, as if he hadn’t been injured, as if he weren’t seeking shelter from the storm raging outside, and brushed his lips against the shell of Shion’s right ear. He shuddered. “If this had been a knife, you’d be dead right now.”

 

A muscle in Shion’s throat twitched. His fists clenched. “That—that was amazing.”

 

Nezumi’s expression went from shocked to confused in a matter of seconds. “Hah?”

 

“How did you do that?” Shion wiggled his toes. The sensation in them had begun to return, but the crushing weight of Nezumi on his hips kept feeling from his thighs. “Is it something you learned on your own, or did someone teach you?”

 

Nezumi gawked at him, opening and closing his mouth as if he didn’t have the faintest idea what to say. He sank down on top of Shion, covering him with burning warmth, and Shion’s cheeks flushed again. Nezumi’s body trembled—it took Shion a moment to realize he was laughing again. “Good Lord,” gasped Nezumi, his breath warm against Shion’s throat, “you’re such an idiot. That’s what you ask me? Geez. You’re one of a kind, you know that?”

 

Without meaning to, Shion slid his arms around Nezumi’s waist. He wasn’t shoved away like he’d feared. He ran the tips of his fingers over the notches in Nezumi’s spine before moving to thread his fingers in long, dark hair. Nezumi made a low grumbling sound against his throat. His skin felt hot—burning with sweat. “You’ve got a fever,” Shion said.

 

“‘S not a bite,” mumbled Nezumi.

 

“I know that, but we should find a way to bring your fever down before—”

 

“Shh.” Nezumi pressed deeper into Shion’s throat, a heavy, burning weight in his arms. His hair fell around Shion’s face, and for the first time, Shion realized he smelled like ice. It wasn’t an unpleasant scent. He held Nezumi just a bit together. “Hmm...You’re pretty warm.” Nezumi’s words were a low buzz, barely audible in the dark, empty bedroom. He said something else, low and gentle, but Shion didn’t catch it.

 

Nezumi went still in his arms. After a moment, Shion heard the deep, heavy breaths of someone who’d fallen asleep. Shion tilted his head toward the ceiling. Nezumi’s body felt impossibly warm in his arms, comfortable in a way Shion had never imagined. It was like they fit together perfectly.

 

His eyelids felt heavy. Taking in a deep breath, filling his lungs with the scent of ice, Shion too drifted off to sleep, the sound of the wind rattling just beyond his window.

 

**~ * ~ * ~ * ~**

 

His nightmares did not contain Bees this time. Shion found himself standing in the middle of a vast, empty room, and in front of him, clad all in black, was the boy.

 

Shion took in every last detail of him. Long, grayish hair was pulled back out of an angular face. The boy wore a simple black outfit—a loose shirt and a pair of slacks with heavy boots. A silver knife, glimmering like a strip of moonlight, bounced at his hip.

 

“Nezumi?” Shion whispered.

 

The boy’s lips quirked into a smile, and he raised his head. Shion tried to piece together the image of his face; in all his nightmares, he could never remember one detail about the boy. His eyes.

 

He thought of Nezumi’s storm gray irises. Such a beautiful color, unlike anything he’d seen before. He looked at the boy standing before him now, and imagined what he would look like with silver eyes.

 

The silver didn’t suit him.

 

Not at all.

 

“I—I don’t understand.” Shion took a trembling step back as the boy took a step forward. “You—you are Nezumi, aren’t you? So why—why don’t you—”

 

The boy held up a finger to his lips, silencing him. Shion took in a deep breath and stepped away from the boy who was not Nezumi—who had never been Nezumi. There were so many questions he wanted to ask, so many uncertainties he needed an answer to. “Not yet,” whispered the boy. “Not yet.”

 

**~ * ~ * ~ * ~**

 

When Shion woke up, the sky had grown light outside the window and the storm had stopped. He stretched lazily, drawing in a deep breath that filled his lungs with the comforting scent of pine needles and snow. He rolled over onto his side, and felt his stomach tighten into knots.

 

He sat up and peered around the room, everything in his heightened vision seeming brighter to him now than it ever had before.

 

Nezumi was gone.

 

The blue comforter was crumpled at the foot of the mattress, two pillows beside it. He looked around. Aside from the heaps of blankets at the end of the bed and the empty tray on the floor, there was nothing to suggest that Nezumi had ever been there at all. Nothing to say where he’d gone and when—or _if_ —he’d be back.

 

Shion knew Nezumi would have left eventually. He was a VC. The Security Bureau would be after him. Nezumi had to leave, to survive. The only reason he had stayed was to catch some rest and not deal with the chaos raging outside the window.

 

Despite knowing that, Shion felt a hollow pit form in his stomach. Nezumi’s scent wafted around him as he clenched the blankets in his fists. They had only know each other for a short time, but already Shion felt comforted by his presence.

He slowly climbed out of bed, his eyes stinging. Well, whatever. It wasn’t as if Nezumi had any reason to stay with him. _I just thought...I don’t know_. Swallowing his disappointment, Shion pulled his shirt over his head and tossed them to the basket with the rest of the laundry. He took a simple white button-up from his closet and a pair of old jeans. He was feeling casual. He combed his hands through his hair roughly.

 

He would forget all about what happened yesterday. He would just go back to his old life, forgetting the storm...forgetting the nightmares of the Bees and the black-clad boy...forgetting Nezumi…

 

Shion stopped with one hand still dragging through his hair. There was absolutely no way he’d ever be able to forget Nezumi. After everything they’d been through, he knew Nezumi’s memory would remain with him for the rest of his days.

 

And he also knew that he would wonder why Nezumi had left for the rest of eternity. _He doesn’t have any obligation to you_. Shion remembered the warmth of Nezumi’s body, the icy feeling of lips brushing the shell of his ear. He wrapped his arms around his body and exhaled. Regardless of what came next, no matter what, he would never forget Nezumi.

 

But as he descended the stairs and stepped into the kitchen, Shion spotted a tall blond man with glasses standing against the counter next to his mother. And as Shion entered, the man leveled him with a fierce glare. Shion froze. The man’s eyes were a dark shade of brown—they pierced through Shion’s soul, pinning him in place.

 

Karan gave him a reassuring smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Shion understood why. The man wore the uniform of a Security Bureau officer. Shion should have known this would happen. He clenched his fists and raised his chin.

 

“Shion, right?” said the blond man. He had a gravelly, deep voice. He fixed his glasses and stepped forward. “I am Rashi, of the Security Bureau. You’ll be coming with me.”

 

Shion took a deep breath and nodded, once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the next chapter, we explore a bit more about the Security Bureau and Shion's punishment for harboring a VC. We'll also get a bit more into what the Bee chasing Nezumi was.
> 
> A big hand to all of those who have stuck by me so far. I'm hoping that you'll all come to enjoy this story as it continues. This particular part is one of my favorites; planning it out was a lot of fun, and there are quite a few scenes I can't wait to get to write about.
> 
> I hope to have the next chapter updated in a few days. As a slight teaser, the story summary is actually taken from a scene in the next chapter, so you'll all have a good time with that, I'm sure.
> 
> Thank you everyone, and I'll see you again in the next chapter.


	3. Drowning Humanity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “This is what happens to traitors in No.6.” Rashi’s voice buzzed over the hum of terror clogging his mind. “Is this where you want to end up?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome once again to the next chapter of _ripped apart_. Thank you all for sticking with this story. I'm sorry for the late chapter update, but hopefully I'll have the next one up and running soon.
> 
> Work's been rather busy these past few days—but then again, I can't really expect much else from the Post Office. The holidays are always a busy time, so this is nothing new. Once the holidays end, my days will hopefully go back to normal and I'll be able to write more.
> 
> In this chapter, we'll find out what happens to Shion for breaking the law, and how far No.6 will go to protect the city from potential traitors.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has bookmarked, commented, or submitted kudos. It means a lot to me to know that I've been able to create something people enjoy reading. Hopefully I'll be able to keep making you guys happy with new chapter updates.
> 
> Enjoy!

The Security Bureau officials stripped Shion out of his clothes and half-drowned him in a large porcelain tub in the middle of an empty metal room. He wondered if it were possible for them to rub his skin off as they tugged and scraped at him with a coarse rag and awful-smelling soap.

 

They removed him from the tub. Shion coughed and sputtered, brown hair sticking to his forehead like the web of a spider.

 

“You will stay here awhile,” Rashi told him. He stood in the open doorway, watching with cold eyes as Shion was wrapped up tight in stiff brown towels. “We cannot risk you contacting the Outsider.”

 

Shion understood this, and understood even more that no amount of protesting would be enough to change the minds of the Security Bureau. Even so, he felt a wave of disgust at the implication that he would try and send a message to Nezumi.

 

But wouldn’t he? If he’d been given freedom instead of interrogation by the Security Bureau, would he have tried to contact Nezumi? He doubted he would even know where to send a letter, if he wanted.

 

Rough hands found his shoulders, and Shion was led down a long hall, longer than anything he’d ever seen in his life. At the end of the hall was a large room, vacant aside from a cot and a hand-sized filtering vent. There wasn’t even a window, no way in or out of the room except for the heavy white door. Shion wanted to laugh with the insanity of it all. The Security Bureau was so afraid of him sending a message to Nezumi, they felt it necessary to isolate him as much as possible.

 

“Why can’t I go home?” Shion asked as the Security Bureau officials escorted him into the room. There was a black and blue striped pair of pants and a black shirt spread out on the coat.

 

Rashi, on the threshold, paused. His sharp eyes seemed paler than Shion remembered. “It is better that you stay here for now.”

 

“What about my mother?” Shion slowly crossed his arms over his chest and cupped his elbows, folding in on himself. He thought of Karan, standing there in her white cardigan, smiling warm as a summer’s day.

 

Rashi didn’t answer immediately. He stood, a wraith in a black suit with cold eyes. After a minute, he said in a measured voice, “If she has nothing to do with this, she will be left alone.”

 

He turned away, then, and the Security Bureau officials filed out of the room. Shion watched after them, still as a pillar. The heavy door closed with a bang, and Shion caught the grating sound of a lock sliding into its place. So this wasn’t a room, after all. It was a prison cell.

 

For a while, Shion stood in the middle of the room. He thought, if he listened hard enough, he could hear the sounds of the Bees wandering outside the walls of No.6. But that was impossible—the walls of his prison were much too thick for such things.

 

He wondered, absently, if he would see Nezumi when he turned to look at the bed. Naturally, the only thing that greeted him, when he finally worked the courage to look, was the VC uniform, spread out on his bed like an invitation.

 

**~ * ~ * ~ * ~**

 

Shion wondered what time it was when he finally laid down on the cot. As he’d begun to dry, he became aware of how cold the prison cell actually was. Or perhaps the officials were filtering cold air in through the vent in an attempt to torment him.

 

He slid the VC uniform over his head without looking at the way the black and blue fabric made his pale skin stand out. Then, dressed and free from the cold for only a moment, Shion slid beneath the paper-thin blanket and turned onto his side, away from the locked door.

 

He wanted to sleep. He felt as if so much time had passed that it was now sometime in the middle of the night, but then he wondered if that were just the trick of the dimly-lit room. Where the light came from, he had no idea. He wondered if the walls were equipped with some mechanism that kept them lit enough to allow prisoners to see, though not to be immersed completely in the light.

 

Sleep evaded him, and although Shion’s body felt heavy and devoid of strength, his mind simply would not slow down.

 

He didn’t want to be burdened with these memories anymore. No.6, the Moondrop, the typhoon raging outside his bedroom window in Chronos—Shion wanted to forget all of it.

 

Except Nezumi. As much as Shion wanted the past few hours to slip into nothingness, he refused to forget the gray-eyed boy who’d sought shelter in his room. Those gray eyes, filled with intelligence and murder, and just behind all that, fear. Seeing him there, bleeding and soaked through with rainwater, Shion had instantly wished to protect him from any and all dangers of the world.

 

Shion wrapped himself in the thin blanket and buried his head in the pillow. It smelled of bleach, not at all like the icy scent of his own bed back in Chronos.

 

**~ * ~ * ~ * ~**

 

Shion hardly slept, and had no idea how much time had passed. It felt like an eternity before the door drew open with a low creak. Shion rolled over slightly to blink at the Security Bureau official bustling into his cell with a paper tray. He set it on the floor beside Shion’s bed, then quickly shut the door as he left. The lock slid back into place.

 

Shion didn’t bother with the food. Whatever appetite he’d managed to find had disappeared once again in the middle of the night.

 

He wasn’t bothered again until Rashi opened the door to check on him. Regardless of the words that spilled from the man’s tight lips, Shion knew the real reason he was here—he was checking to see whether or not Shion’s mental state had decreased.

 

He wondered when the interrogation would occur. Would the Security Bureau keep him trapped in this cell until he was a raving lunatic, no longer able to tell what was reality or fiction of the mind? How long would that take?

 

Part of him desired to rebel against treatment he deemed completely unfair. What right did the Bureau have to keep him trapped here, when he hadn’t done anything wrong?

 

That wasn’t entirely true. Though Shion felt he was being treated completely unfairly, in the eyes of No.6, he’d broken the law. Harboring an Outsider without reporting it landed Shion in a perfect position to be taken to a Correctional Facility. He should have been thanking the Bureau. At least they hadn’t immediately dubbed him a criminal and carted him away.

 

Instead of wondering about when the Security Bureau would come and take him to be interrogated, Shion put his time and energy into remembering his encounter with Nezumi. He lay on the cot with his eyes closed, mind returning to the way Nezumi’s bony hand had wrapped around his wrist and dragged him to the bed, the way he’d pretended to slice his throat with a spoon. Gray eyes widening in shock when Shion offered him assistance instead of incarceration, and the way the words “thank you” seemed to fall out of his mouth as if he’d never said them before.

 

He played over the memories again and again, terrified to forget any details and wondering if he already had. Were Nezumi’s eyes really as gray as he remembered? Did he really smell like ice? He went over each memory at least a million times—refusing to forget a single detail. He wanted the memory to become a part of him, to be something he could never lose.

 

**~ * ~ * ~ * ~**

 

The interrogation came and went, and Shion was surprised at how easy it all was. He was brought before Rashi and several other Security Bureau officials, and asked to relay what had occurred.

 

He told them as much as he dared—choosing to omit the precious moment he’d ingrained in his memory. It seemed very unlikely that the Bureau had use for the deep color of Nezumi’s eyes, or the warmth Shion had felt when he saw him smile.

 

He gave them a simple story: an Outsider had come into his house, injured. Shion had felt it necessary to give him assistance.

 

Rashi interpreted the story in an odd way. He nodded his head as Shion spoke, and when he finished giving his account, the Security Bureau official stated, “So you felt pity for the Outsider.”

 

 _Pity?_ Shion thought to the emotions that had surged inside him when he’d seen Nezumi standing in the window. Had he felt pity for the bleeding boy? No matter how many times he replayed that night in his head, _pity_ was not present in the list of things Shion had felt for Nezumi.

 

After several hours of debating, in which Shion was sent back to his cot and instructed to wait, the Security Bureau decided to grant Shion freedom—with some clear, punishing restrictions. He would be allowed to leave the Security Bureau and return to his mother, but he would be under heavy surveillance.

 

Rashi let him out of the cell, and handed him the clothes he’d arrived in, washed and folded. Shion changed into them and then followed Rashi out of the Security Bureau. A car was waiting to take him back to his house where, just a few days ago, his life had changed.

 

The ride back to Chronos was silent and brief. The Security Bureau official assigned with the task of carting him home said absolutely nothing to him the entire time. Shion was thankful for that. The last thing he wanted was a second interrogation.

 

He had been away from his home for longer than he could remember—as they approached, it seemed to loom like the tooth of some great beast. Shion found himself shrinking away from the door as the car pulled up just outside his home.

 

As the car peeled away, leaving Shion standing in a dust cloud on his front lawn, he swallowed back the ache of feeling like an Outsider in his own neighborhood.

 

No one stood on the porches of the surrounding homes, and yet Shion could feel their eyes firmly locked on him. They were hiding, whispering rumors about the boy who’d broken the law and survived.

 

Shion slowly walked towards his front door, feeling the ache of his memories. It had only happened a few days ago—Nezumi slipping into his bedroom, injured and desperate for help—but the house seemed to have burned the memory into its smooth, metallic walls.

 

As Shion ascended the short stack of steps leading to his front door, he felt as if the memories were very slowly slipping out through the walls. Now that he was home, there was no need for the house to hang onto them for him. He could practically taste the blood Nezumi had dripped upstairs on his carpet, could smell the rain and the lingering scent of ice.

 

He reached out and caught himself against the door frame. Years of guests placing their hands on the cool wooden surface had smoothed one section of the frame. Yoming had suggested that Karan get it fixed, but she had simply shrugged and announced that it gave her house some character.

 

Shion waited for the comforts of home to wash away the insanity of his new memories. The thoughts of his mother’s baking, the calming moments playing with Safu in the backyard, and the silent moments spent watching the news praise No.6 and its wholesome community were shoved aside in favor of remembering the exact color of Nezumi’s eyes, the way his voice sounded.

 

Just when Shion thought the overwhelming sensations would drive him to madness, the door clicked open. Shion jerked his hand away from the smooth patch on the door frame, startled back into the world, and peered up into the face of his mother. Karan stood inside a darkened room, her eyes rimmed with red and her lips drawn into a tight line.

 

For a moment, Shion was frightened by the darkness in his mother’s eyes. Karan had always been a kind woman, eager to please and always willing to provide comfort. Shion searched her face now for any sign of the mother he’d grown up with, and found little remaining. Her brown eyes glittered like the edges of thin blades, and she seemed as hard as the walls of the Correctional Facility.

 

The moment her eyes landed on Shion’s face, the illusion of darkness shattered. “S—Shion?”

 

“Mom,” Shion murmured.

 

Karan’s hands darted out and grasped his shoulders so hard that her fingers dug around the bone. Shion winced against the pain, but even that was better than the crushing numbness the custody of the Security Bureau had left him with. Karan’s voice was low and urgent as she whispered, “Are you all right? Did they hurt you?”

 

“No, Mom,” Shion answered mechanically, his voice feeling artificial and cracked. “No, I’m...I’m OK.”

 

They stared into each other’s eyes—mother and son—and finally, Shion moved forward to close the slight gap between them. Karan met him halfway, her arms looping around his body and crushing him firmly against her.

 

And finally, in the safety of his mother’s arms, Shion felt the fresh sting of tears. “Mom,” he whispered, his voice thick with emotion.

 

Karan murmured soothing words against his temple, her arms strong yet gentle. Shion shivered against her, the bite of the wind sending pinprick sensations up his spine. No.6 towered behind them like a looming dictator, and yet in his mother’s protective embrace, Shion felt strong enough to turn around and push the city back.

 

**~ * ~ * ~ * ~**

 

It was several days before Rashi sent a car to pick Shion up and return him to the Security Bureau. He’d been expecting that he would be seeing the steel-eyed official again, and yet when the black car pulled to a stop in front of his house, Shion felt his blood chill.

 

Shion stepped out onto the porch and set his jaw. He wanted to yell at the official stepping from the car that he had suffered enough and that he was sorry and that he wanted nothing to do with them.

 

He couldn’t send the Security Bureau away. He and his mother had no one; social pariahs who had allowed an Outsider to room with them, even for a single night, had no purpose in their neighborhood. Karan had already lost touch with the few women who did speak with her—and even though she stroked Shion’s head and told him she didn’t mind, he suspected it must hurt.

 

He could no longer be Karan’s only means of comfort. Him, the reminder that it was only her and her child alone in a world filled with monsters both inside the wall and out. Shion flexed his fingers against the door, nails digging into the worn wood, realizing that he had no power in No.6, and thanks to his pitiful attempts at kindness, he was seconds away from losing everything.

 

“Shion.” The Security Bureau official was a short, plump man with a clean pressed black suit and a pair of dark glasses that obscured his eyes. He gestured to the sleek car, glimmering beneath the brilliant sunlight. “If you would come with me, please.”

 

Struggling to keep his throat from burning, not wanting to let No.6 see how terrified he was, Shion nodded and hurried out of his house. Deep inside, his mother’s trembling hands were packing her few belongings into boxes the Security Bureau had provided them with. She and Shion had spent the better part of the past three days packing up their home.

 

At the end of the week, they would be relocated to the lowest portion of No.6—Lost Town.

 

Shion looked at his neighbor’s houses out of the corner of his eye. The uniform buildings rose like dark teeth in a perfectly similar neighborhood. He despised the normalcy of it. Everything, all the same. Everyone, just a puppet of the government.

 

Moving to Lost Town was intended to be a punishment; he’d been removed from the Gifted Courses, too, and would be forced to seek an education in schools without access to the best research materials available. He’d broken the law, and no matter how high is IQ, potential traitors could not be allowed to reap the benefits of high society life.

 

Shion wanted to laugh at the lot of them. When Rashi declared his punishment, Shion felt as if a huge shackle had slipped from his ankle. The eyes of No.6 would continue to be on him, especially now that he had already created ties with someone outside the wall, but it was not the same as it had been. To No.6, Shion was a second-class citizen, and not worthy of their time. He could operate on his own now. He could take time to find out what he enjoyed doing—what made him uniquely him. No longer just a cog in the wheel. _Free_. Something he’d never been.

 

The car pulled up outside the Security Bureau building, a massive, looming building that rose into the sky like a glossy black spire. The official guided Shion out of the car and kept a firm hand on his shoulder. Shion was not wearing the VC outfit anymore, dressed in a dark blue sweater and a pair of khakis, but he had never felt like more of a prisoner.

 

Rashi met them on the threshold, steel-green eyes locked firmly on Shion’s face. Flanked by two officers clad in matching black and white uniforms. Rashi gestures to Shion with a firm jerk of the head. “Thank you for joining us. I’m sure this must seem...unexpected. But I assure you, we have our methods. Trust in the city, Shion, and you will be fine.”

 

“Trust in the city,” Shion repeated, but his heart wasn’t in the words.

 

Rashi drew in a sharp inhale, and Shion watched the way his lips tightened into a thin line. He turned abruptly and walked to a long hallway at the opposite end of a huge, dome-shaped room. “Follow me,” he said, and when Shion moved forward to go after him, the three other Security Bureau officials made no move to go with them.

 

Shion matched Rashi’s long, sure strides, and together they breezed down a white hallway that stretched deeper into the Security Bureau building that Shion had been before. The first time he’d come here days ago, he’d been dragged in handcuffs to a large room directly at the front of the building, and then up a floor to his cell.

 

Rashi led him now to the very end of the white hallway—not a door in sight except for a large metal one right in front of them, a pin pad beeping and glittering next to it.

 

Shion watched Rashi’s skilled fingers punch in a long sequence code, one he had no choice of remembering, and the metal door slid open with a sputtering hiss. Directly in front of Shion’s face was a dark room with a steep, winding metal staircase, stretching down into pitch blackness. Rashi gestured to the stairs, and Shion entered.

 

As they moved down the stairway, invisible lights on the wall lit up whenever they passed. LED lights lit the stairs as brilliantly as the sun; the stairs led into a cavernous room that contained long rows of shelves lined with colored glass bottles and vials and jars filled with unknown items Shion had a terrifying suspicion had once belonged to someone—or _something_ —human.

 

Rashi marched across the room, and Shion hurried to keep up with him. Passing by the vials, Shion tried not to look, and he had to keep telling himself that he had nothing to be afraid of down here. He’d already been issued a punishment. The Security Bureau just couldn’t take him and do something horrible to him now that he’d been punished—could they?

 

“You were not alive during the First Strike,” said Rashi over his shoulder, his voice a cracking puff in the silent room, “so I would not expect you to understand the horrors that lurk outside.”

 

Shion shivered as the Security Bureau official led him to a dark corner of the room, where another locked door lay waiting. Rashi punched in another code into the pin pad, echoing with loud shrieks and chirps, and urged Shion inside.

 

Shion followed him down another hallway; this one did not light up as they passed by, and it was not made of metal like the rest of the building. Like night and day, the hall before him stretched into a large arrangement of stones and a dirt floor, the ceiling held up by sturdy granite beams. More racks lined the walls, each filled with dusty bottles.

 

“I was in college when the Bees came,” Rashi continued. “You were born four years after it began. You have never lived outside the wall, have never witnessed the terror of what was once dead and what has returned to us. You should consider yourself lucky for that, Shion—but, the truth of it is, luck had nothing to do with it. You owe your carefree life to No.6. You owe _everything you are_ to No.6.”

 

Despite the fact that he kept telling himself not to be afraid, that Rashi would not hurt him, Shion shivered. He wanted to turn around and run, but he doubted he could move fast enough to escape Rashi. And even if he did he would just run right into the arms into the other Security officials. He doubted they would let him go with such a light punishment again.

 

“What is now No.6 was once miles and miles of farmland. It was destroyed by those undead cretins—those cursed fools who succumbed to the blackened parasites twisting inside their bodies. But we fought back. We shoved them away and created these six city-states. You learned about that in school, did you not?” Rashi did not wait for an answer before continuing. “No, but the schools will not tell you the whole truth of it. We took our lands back and destroyed a handful of those nasty beasts, but we lost the world, Shion. We _lost_. There are millions and millions of those monsters slithering outside. We could not save the whole world—so we made No.6 our whole world.”

 

The tunnel curbed to the left. Every dozen steps, Shion and Rashi would pass a door embedded in the stone. The wooden doors were warped and scarred, with thick bolts driven into the walls. Shion paused by one for half a second, wanting to ask Rashi what lied beyond, but Rashi continued forward, and Shion had to rush to keep up.

 

Rashi came to a halt in front of a large metal door embedded deep in the stones. A large metal bar rested over the front of it, keeping the metal tightly closed. In the dim lighting, Shion could barely make out the shape of Rashi’s shoulders, the way his arms hung loose at his sides. “I will do anything to protect No.6, Shion,” said the Security Bureau official, and Shion’s blood ran cold.

 

Rashi slid the metal bar from over the door, metal scraping together. Setting the bar on the floor, Rashi turned slowly toward him, and Shion shrank. He moved with such sudden swiftness that Shion was reminded of Nezumi—darting and quick—and he shoved Shion forward. He stumbled and nearly went sprawling into the dirt. He looked up, lips trembling, pleas forming; Rashi glared down at him, eyes flickering behind his glasses, and Shion’s words died. “Open it,” Rashi said, his voice terrifying with its low pitch. Shion realized he had little other choice than to obey.

 

Shivering and wanting to beg for his life, Shion pushed with all his might against the heavy metal door, until it swung open with an ominous creak that would forever haunt his nightmares.

 

He felt Rashi’s leg sweep out behind him, and suddenly Shion was on his knees on the other side of the metal door. Gravel from the hard dirt floor dug into his knees, and as Shion scrambled upright, he felt the door swing and bang shut.

 

Beneath his hands were cool stones, and a musty wind struck his face. Shion was disoriented, thrown into confusion, until he spotted a mound of cloth curled directly in front of him.

 

The pile of rags shifted, and Shion realized with a start that there was something beneath it. He made a movement backwards, his palms striking the closed door. The rags rose, lifted high by some tall figure in the dim darkness. Shion just barely made out the glint of chains, hearing them rattle against the hollowness of the cobblestones.

 

“What are you doing?” Shion whispered. His voice was breathless and weak, barely anything more than a crude puff of air.

 

And yet that was enough. The figure beneath the rags snapped around, peering at Shion. His entire body went straight as a board, stiff and still. And then he heard it—the first low moan, fresh from his nightmares, too close, too loud, swelling all around him, crushing him into the stones. He scurried back, his spine pressed into the metal door, feeling the cool ridges of bolts biting into his flesh.

 

An explosion of noise erupted around him—the Bee rocketing to its feet with a shrieking cry, and the chains rattling around it as it lunged towards his face.

 

Shion barely had enough time to gasp, overwhelmed by the stench of decay and frightened by the cat-like pounce of the Bee. He watched through the pale darkness as the Bee’s thin body arced toward him, fingers outstretched like the legs of an albino spider.

 

And just before they caught his chin, the fingers snapped to an abrupt halt. The chains were pulled taught, connected to a rusted metal bar embedded in the far wall.

 

Shion’s breath exhaled in a shuddering gasp.

 

The Bee’s movements were frantic, yanking against the tightened chains with all its strength. The metal rattled in a painful echo around the small room.

 

Shion was too close. A single inch towards the Bee, and Shion would be right in its grasp. The thin white hands snapped in front of his face, hooking through the air and seeking his demise. Blood rumbled like thunder in his ears.

 

“The chains—” Shion gasped, hoping, _praying_ , that Rashi would hear him over the intense rattling and shrieking moans. “The chains aren’t going to hold—” The Bee gave a sudden lunge, and the loud screech of metal filled Shion with unearthly fear. “ _Please!_ ” he cried, tears blurring his vision. “Please— _don’t!_ ”

 

Rashi stood just outside the metal door, his glasses bright and blocking out his eyes. “I need you to see this, Shion,” he said, his voice calm and loud over the rattling and screaming. “You need to understand.”

 

Shion _didn’t_ understand. He couldn’t understand anything except that he was a hair’s breadth away from the clutches of a Bee desperate to get its teeth and claws into him, and somehow, Rashi was completely willing to place him in harm’s way. _We made No.6 our whole world. I’ll do anything to protect No.6_. Shion sat with his back pressed against the frigid metal of the door, peering through the darkness. He could barely make out the shape of the Bee, one of the tallest shapes he’d seen in his life, much bigger than him but much skinnier, but the sounds were more than enough to fuel his imagination.

 

“This is what happens to traitors in No.6.” Rashi’s voice buzzed over the hum of terror clogging his mind. “Is this where you want to end up?”

 

Shion drew in several deep breaths. He tasted blood, felt the tears dripping down his face. The Bee’s fingertips were only moments away from his lips, so close that, if he angled his head slightly upward, he could kiss them.

 

Shion heard the sound of feet shifting against the stones beyond the door. Terror seized his heart like an icy hand. Rashi was leaving. Rashi was _leaving_. Rashi was going to _leave him here_.

 

“ _NO!_ ” Shion whipped around and pounded his fists against the door. He felt the edges of his hair brush for an instant against the Bee’s fingers. “No! Don’t leave me here! For the love of God, please _don’t leave me here!_ ”

 

Rashi’s face appeared back in the small window. His lips were drawn thin and bloodless. There were lines at the corners of his eyes, suggesting that, at one time in his life, perhaps long before the First Strike, he’d known what it was like to genuinely smile. “Then I need you to pledge loyalty to the city, Shion. There’s no room for traitors here.”

 

It was hard to hear him over the rattling of the chains behind him, beyond the desperation and desire for his flesh. Shion knelt with his trembling fists curled against the door. He kept his eyes on the stone ground as he nodded. He had no other choice.

 

“I need you to _say_ it, Shion,” Rashi said, and his voice was blocked out by the loud screeching of nails loosening from the wall.

 

“I pledge loyalty to No.6,” Shion gasped. He tasted death all around him—stale, thick, pushing down on him like a weight. The Bee’s presence was a crushing weight at his back, the swinging swipe of long claws scraping at the edges of his sweater.

 

“Louder,” Rashi commanded. His eyes were luminous as the moon, burning into Shion’s skull.

 

“I pledge loyalty to—The chains are coming loose, _please_ —”

 

“I need you to _scream it!_ ”

 

The chains rattled against the back of Shion’s mind, and the edges of sharp fingers caught at the ends of his hair.

 

“Please—please, get me out of here—”

 

Rashi pounded his fists against the outside of the metal door, drowning out the pleading and the approach of the chained Bee behind him. “ _Say it!_ ”

 

“ _I pledge loyalty to No.6!_ ” Shion bellowed, pouring his heart and soul into the words.

 

The metal door swung open, and Shion scrambled forward like a dog. His hands scraped the earth until they pressed against Rashi’s shins, Shion’s nose just inches away from the toes of his boots. The smell of death dissipated as soon as the heavy door slammed shut behind him, Rashi sliding the metal bar back in place, and the rattling of chains and the piercing moans were now trapped behind an impenetrable cage.

 

He drew in several deep breaths, chest shuddering with sobs. He knelt in front of Rashi, head lowered as if he were a servant kissing the feet of his master.

 

“You see,” Rashi purred, placing both of his hands on top of Shion’s head. “It’s easy to pledge loyalty, but there’s a catch. You must _mean it_ , Shion. It’s not enough for you to simply speak the words. You just take them to heart, live them out each day.”

 

Rashi’s fingers carded through Shion’s hair, and all he could think of were the moments when he and Karan would sit in front of the window. She would run her fingers through Shion’s hair and whisper to him that there was something more out there for them, that No.6 would never be eternal.

 

“I pledge loyalty to No.6,” Shion whimpered, desperate to get away from the Bee just beyond the metal door.

 

“Excellent,” Rashi said in a gentle tone. His hands slid from the top of Shion’s hair, releasing him for only the briefest of moments—and then he caught Shion’s chin in a grip that was firm and almost painful. He jerked Shion’s head up, and Shion found himself peering beyond the glasses and into two pools of stormy green. His voice was low and harsh as he snarled, “Then the next time you open your mouth, it will be to praise our fair city.”

 

It took Shion a few moments to understand the words—that he was safe for the time being—and then he nodded frantically as the loud scrape of chains dragged across the ground just beyond the locked door echoed around him.

 

Rashi dragged him to his feet without a word, and then guided Shion back through the tunnels, into the huge room filled with vials—Shion did not look at them, did not want to. He thought back to the darkness behind Rashi’s steel-colored irises, his willingness to put one of No.6’s citizens in danger. _I’ll do anything to protect No.6_. And if that meant sending a handful of those citizens to the slaughter, then Shion supposed Rashi was more than willing to do so.

 

Trembling, Shion realized the Security Bureau had always been a cold place. Looming in the background, whispering threats to any and all potential traitors, watching for any signs that people were going to question the choices of the city. In school, Shion had learned that the Security Bureau was there to protect them from the monsters outside the walls—but now Shion understood that the Security Bureau was the monster _inside_ the walls.

 

As they emerged from the winding metal staircase, Rashi shoved Shion down the white hallway and back into the dome-shaped foyer of the Security Bureau building. He passed Shion off to the same officer who’d brought him in; the man’s thick fingers bit into Shion’s trembling shoulders. “Take him back to his house.” He leveled Shion with a piercing glare. “You will remember what we talked about, won’t you?”

 

“I pledge loyalty to No.6,” Shion whispered, clearly, trying to keep the shudders out of his voice.

 

Rashi’s lips split into a twisted, sick grin. He tapped Shion on the cheek with cold fingers. “Enjoy Lost Town, Shion. We’ll be watching you.”

 

The officer led Shion back out to the sleek black car, and if he’d noticed the tear stains marking Shion’s flushed cheeks, or if he noticed how Shion hunched in on himself in the passenger’s seat, covering his eyes with his hands and pressing hard to avoid crumbling into a sobbing mess, he said nothing about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No.6 is willing to go to intense lengths to prevent traitors. Even going so far as to traumatize a twelve-year-old child. What a horrible, twisted city.
> 
> In the next chapter, there will be a four-year time jump. Shion will be sixteen years old, living in Lost Town, and we'll end up getting more into the Bees and what lies beyond the wall. It will be much longer than this chapter, and perhaps even longer than the first official chapter.
> 
> Thank you everyone for reading, and I look forward to seeing you all again in the next chapter. Hoping to have it up either later this weekend or sometime right after the holidays. Have an awesome season, guys!


	4. Land of the Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shion had looked up at him, perched on his elbows. His cheeks had stung with three days worth of endless wailing; he’d felt nothing, curled on his bed before the ice-cold leader of the Security officers. “ _I broke the laws of No.6, sir_.”
> 
> “ _And what law would that be, Shion?_ ”
> 
> “ _I allowed an Outsider to come into the city. I did not contact the Security Bureau. I assisted a VC in escaping justice, sir. I put all of No.6 in danger with my actions_.” The words had felt clunky and rehearsed, stumbling out of Shion’s mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone! I am so sorry for the late update. It's been a rather rough couple of weeks for me. Work has been a bit on the hectic side, and my laptop decided to die on me suddenly. But everything has been fixed, and I was able to get the rest of the chapter updated.
> 
> In addition to not having my laptop for a day or two, I was struggling with a bit of writer's block. That beast that's hard to get rid of once it grabs hold. But, thankfully, I was able to beat it and finish the next chapter of " _ripped apart_."
> 
> Please enjoy, everyone!

Yamase had finally cried himself to sleep, tear-streaked face half hidden by his disordered black hair, head buried in the ratty, stained pillow Rashi had given him earlier that morning. Dim moonlight filtered through the slots in the windows; the gentle light of night flattered him. Yamase was lucky—in the unforgiving sunlight his eyes and nose would have been blotched red from an entire day of endless sobbing.

 

It was a small mercy that Rashi permitted uncovered windows. Silvery moonlight hid the irritated crimson of his eyelids, transforming the tears lingering on his cheeks into glittering gemstones. He looked pitiable; had Shion not been dealing with crying misfits for four years since coming to Lost Town, the soft fragile beauty of the young man in front of him would have softened the heart of anyone except Rashi. The unofficial leader of the No.6 Security Bureau felt pity for _no one_.

 

It had taken Yamase less time to adjust to his situation than some of the others, Shion allowed. When he’d been taken from his mother’s side, brought into a tiny, bare-bones bedroom in a run-down building and told that he would be living here from now on, he’d spent three days sobbing and screaming. Rashi had locked the door and kept him inside until he’d stopped—Shion could have spent the rest of his life in there, but hunger, desperation to see Karan, and an underlying sense of boredom urged him to comply.

 

Shion’s training held firm, and he schooled his expression into simple impassivity. He kept his gaze fixed on the dust-covered window panes. In the morning he’d instruct Yamase to clean them. A mindless task to keep his mind off his horrible situation.

 

Yamase, like the other assistant members “employed” by the Security Bureau, had his own room. The floors were dull and worn; a cool draft rustled through Shion’s dark hair, and his shoulders shot to his ears.

 

Outside the window, the quiet sounds of Lost Town continued their weak cries: crickets singing, two cats in a spat over a rare, discarded piece of meat. Lost Town was not nearly as well-off as Chronos, but Shion knew it was better to live inside the walls than out of them.

 

Dust motes danced through streaks of moonlight. Shion pressed his shoulders against the wall; he’d been leaning against it for the better part of two hours, bored out of his skull. He would rather have been wandering the halls, sweeping the kitchens, or even working in the Security Bureau building itself. But Rashi’s orders kept him here, watching carefully over Yamase to ensure he didn’t harm himself or attempt to escape. One never knew; a handful of others had tried to run. They never made it very far.

 

The soft tittering of young voices reminded Shion that there were others in the small, housing building. He had spent the majority of his own “captivity” with a dozen of them, thirteen now with Yamase. With the door closed, Shion couldn’t see the youngest members of Rashi’s horde—at sixteen years old, Shion was actually one of the older ones, but he’d been twelve when his servitude to the Security Bureau began.

 

The sounds of voices told Shion exactly where the others were: four of them, off in the foyer, probably on their hands and knees, hair hidden by moon-silver bandanas, fingers wrinkled with soap and water. The chore of cleaning the housing unit alternated from week to week. Shion’s shift had been last week; him and two red headed boys, twin brothers, who never stopped chattering or playing pranks.

 

Some of the others preferred their new life. Good behavior ensured that the former criminals would be able to see their families once in awhile. Some of the young, former criminals had already come from Lost Town. Here, instead of coarse rags and hand-me-downs from spoiled children in Chronos, they were given soft uniforms that, while marking them as assistants of the Security Bureau, needed minimal cleaning and were replaced often.

 

Shion’s new life was not easy. He spent only a small handful of hours sleeping from day to day, worked every day of the week, throughout the year, and his jobs alternated between simple cleaning jobs to carrying heavy packages from Lost Town to the Security Bureau building. He was not employed by the Bureau—as a former criminal, Shion lived for free in Lost Town, in the housing unit with other former criminals, but his free living came at a high price.

 

Shion could not act on his own. He couldn’t leave the housing building unless it was to complete a job for the Security Bureau, or unless he’d been given permission. Usually he was tasked with watching over the young criminals—children from Lost Town whose sentences were much shorter than his own. Four years was the typical length of a minor sentence, to ensure that small breaks of the law would not be repeated.

 

Shion’s sentence was indefinite. The crime of not turning in an outsider who’d broken into No.6 seemed to be an indeterminate amount of time. He’d lived in the housing unit for four years, watching others come and go, wondering how old he’d be when he’d be given his freedom.

 

Cliques formed in the former criminal’s housing unit. The younger ex-criminals tended to flock around the older members, taking on the burden of their chores or laughing at their jokes. Shion didn’t require much in the way of company from the younger ones. It wasn’t that he minded their company—but he preferred to do his chores on his own. Doing his own work ensured that he impressed Rashi and, in doing so, earned trust and the potential for a shorter sentence. Good behavior also allowed him to be able to get permission to go and see his mother and, if he had been _very good_ , to see Safu, too.

 

Shion knew what he would see if he opened Yamase’s bedroom door and peered over the hallway railing into the foyer. Two of them would linger by the windows, fluttering duck-feather dusters across the wooden sills while one of them scrubbed a thick yellow sponge across the tiles. The fourth would be polishing the brass door handles; dim-lit bulbs in glass balls suspended from the ceiling would illuminate their features. With their graceful movements, bathed in golden light, the ex-criminals would appear more like apparitions than living beings.

 

Like Rashi and the other members of the Security Bureau, all but five of the ex-criminals wore black uniforms. Five of them, Shion included, wore white instead of pitch black. Four of the five wore white because they were under thirteen years old, and white tended to be reserved for children to portray “innocence”. Shion chose to continue wearing white because it separated him from Rashi and the rest of the Security Bureau.

 

On Shion’s fourteenth birthday, Rashi had come to him with a new uniform. White with silver bands around the wrists, waist, collar and ankles. He’d handed it to Shion and reminded him that it could be traded in for the same black uniform as the other kids’ his age or older in Lost Town’s housing unit.

 

Shion dismissed the suggestion. White was difficult to clean. It picked up more dirt than black. In fact the shirt and pants he wore now were more of a faded gray than white anymore. But Shion didn’t care—he didn’t want to wear Rashi’s conforming black uniform. Whatever stares he received from the citizens of Lost Town, he’d wear the white uniform every day until his punishment ended.

 

Yamase made a strangled sound in his sleep, crushing his face into the pillow. Shion looked up, ignoring the burst of giggles coming down from the foyer. He’d go and shush them if they got too loud.

 

Shion determined that Yamase had probably exhausted himself in his grief and would sleep until morning. He stepped quietly out of the bedroom and clicked the door shut behind him. His room was one over. He’d check up on the ex-criminals in the foyer, straighten up his room, and return to check on Yamase.

 

Shion felt for him. Truly, he did. Yamase, like the remainder of the ex-criminals, had been targeted by the Bureau for breaking the law but, since the laws they’d broken were minor at best, and considering none of them were over eighteen years old, they’d been granted leniency.

 

Yamase had broken no laws, as far as Shion was concerned. He’d been convicted of something else, something the paranoid citizens of Lost Town considered just as bad as law-breaking—being an outcast.

 

There were rumors that Yamase’s left eye could see into the realm of the dead, into the depths of Hell where the Bees lurking around outside of No.6’s walls originated. The rumor had begun when Yamase was a child; he’d told a few people what they would look like as Bees. Those people traveled to No.5 a year later, on a rare evening in which the fenced-in paths leading from No.6 to No.5 had been breached.

 

Breaches were _not_ common. But fences required maintenance, and No.5 tended to be lax in regards to keeping up the security of chain-links. The farther from No.6 people traveled down fenced-in paths, the less taken-care of they became. The breach happened early in the evening, before the group arrived in No.5. All the members of the party were slaughtered long before help arrived; all were Bees when Security Bureau officials swarmed the scene. The Bees looked exactly how Yamase had described, down to where the fatal bite wounds were placed.

 

He’d been ordered by the Security Bureau not to talk about such things again, under threat of punishment. But Yamase had mentioned his rumored abilities to a girl he fancied. He’d commented on a nightmare he’d had the night before, how he saw her being slammed against a dirt wall with an imposing Bee sinking its teeth into her jugular.

 

Shion understood Yamase’s frustration. Three days after he’d moved to Lost Town with his mother, Rashi had taken him to the housing unit and declared that it would be better for him to stay there. He would work for the Security Bureau to ensure he wouldn’t be able to contact the Outsider again.

 

He still remembered the way Karan’s eyes darkened. Her bone-thin fingers tightened on his shoulder. He’d been afraid that Karan would fight Rashi, but he’d placed his hand over hers and smiled up at her, assuring her that everything would be all right. And after all, he was still able to visit with her. There were worse forms of punishment.

 

Outside Yamase’s room, the wooden halls of the Lost Town housing unit lay deserted and bathed in the same golden glow as the foyer. Faded, smoke-stained banisters ran along Shion’s hip, sand-blasted down into smooth poles that slid beneath his fingers without catching.

 

Shion crossed the empty hall and stood at the top of the staircase. A long, dark-red runner raced over the top of the stairs; no one ran up them for fear of slipping and falling. His eyes were already adjusted to the dim light of the foyer; down below, he watched as the tiny, black-clad figures fluttered gracefully around the sleek tile floors. The youngest, a fourteen-year-old named Cameron, cupped his hands into a bucket of soap and tossed the bubbles at Luca, who was only half a year younger than Shion.

 

“How’s the cleaning going, you four?” asked Shion, loud enough to be heard over their tittering laughter but not loud enough to disturb Yamase at the end of the short hallway.

 

Camden gestured to the glistening floors with the sponge, sending droplets of water cascading to the floor like warm rain. “Take a look for yourself.”

 

Shion gave the room a once over and clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “You missed a spot.” He gestured to the darkened corners of the foyer, where the dim light could not reach.

 

Camden tossed the soaked sponge at Shion; it missed by a mile, flopping with a sick squelching sound on the bottom stair. Luca and the other two, the twins, snorted with laughter. Shion couldn’t help smiling. Out of the other dozen ex-criminals who lived in Lost Town’s housing unit with him, he found their company to be the most enjoyable—and the most tolerable.

 

“How’s the new kid doing?” asked one of the twins. Shion couldn’t tell the twins apart. The one speaking was either Ryane or Rayce.

 

“He cried himself to sleep,” said Shion, and the four of them nodded solemnly. Shion had been around to see all of them arrive in the housing unit, and they’d all experienced the same thing. The denial, the anger, the late-night sobbing.

 

“Didn’t Rashi say you were supposed to watch him?” asked the other twin, the one closest to the windows, with the duster in his hand. Shion was pretty sure this one was Ryane.

 

“I’m going back to check on him now. I don’t think he’ll wake up until morning, though.”

 

“That bad, huh?” Camden stood to retrieve his sponge from the bottom stair.

 

Shion shrugged, trying to look like it was just another one of those things. In a way he supposed it was. “We’ll just have to be supportive. If he behaves, he should be out of here soon. Speaking of out of here—Ryane, Rayce, you two are being relocated to No.5 at the end of the week, aren’t you?”

 

“You heard?” The twins went to stand next to each other. Shion frowned. He really couldn’t tell the two of them apart. Beneath the white bandanas, their ginger-red hair fell in the same sharp strands down to their chins. Freckles splashed across their cheeks. Doe-brown eyes blinked up the staircase at Shion; they were both smiling, big toothy grins.

 

“Yeah. Congratulations, you two! That means your punishment is ending.” Shion tried to smile for them. Inside he struggled against a wave of jealousy. His own punishment seemed unending—but he supposed that was the price he paid for assisting Nezumi, however briefly, in his escape from No.6.

 

The twins must have picked up on his jealousy, despite his best efforts to keep it quiet. They smiled at him. “Yours will come soon enough, Shion,” said the twin Shion was pretty sure was Rayce. His voice was just a bit deeper than the other one’s. “Just have faith.”

 

Without a word, just a small smile, Shion turned away from them. He didn’t have the heart to tell them he’d lost all faith in No.6 a long time ago. He no longer found comfort in the Security Bureau, or in the high walls surrounding his home.

 

Shion pretended to be loyal to the city. If Rashi picked up on any doubt directed at No.6, Shion would be dragged back into the dark cells beneath the Security Bureau building and placed at the mercy of a Bee. He would never go back to that again. He would never allow Rashi to threaten him again—would never be put in a cell again.

 

 _I wonder if I’ll be able to see my mom tomorrow_ , Shion wondered, though he knew better than to ask Rashi. Questions aggravated the leader of the Security Bureau. Shion had not been working for Rashi alongside the ex-criminals without learning to keep curiosity and questions to a bare minimum.

 

Curiosity was best confined to his own bedroom. He shut his door behind himself with a deep sigh. He’d left the small lamp by his bed on when he’d left earlier than evening; the little bulb perfectly illuminated the small, bare space.

 

His room was a mirror-image of Yamase’s. He had a small, dark wardrobe, a desk, and a metal-rimmed bed. He spent much of his time sleeping or working for Rashi or visiting his mother and Safu, so Shion did not own much in the way of personal objects.

 

The foyer would be cleaned long before Rashi arrived to check on them, as he did every night just before dawn, and Shion knew Yamase would likely sleep until the sun rose. He dropped into his desk chair, head in his hands, huffing out an exhausted breath. He’d managed to alternate his sleep-schedule fairly well in the past four years, but he still struggled.

 

Scrubbing the heels of his hands over his cheeks, Shion turned to the window and peered out. Not a speck of dust perched on his window sills, nor anywhere else in his room. Just beyond the panes of glass, the vacant streets of Lost Town sat still and quiet as a photograph. It neared three in the morning, and the streetlamps had dipped down to a low, relaxing glow.

 

Shion stepped up to the window and pressed his palm flat against it. His fingers would leave prints, but he’d clean them long before Rashi noticed. Despite the fact that the prints would be inside his window, Rashi would comment on their origin— _So you have been conversing with the Outsider again? Oh, Shion, and I thought we were beyond this_.

 

Beneath the palm of his hand, separated from the warm winds of the late summer evening by a thin pane of glass, Shion saw it: first a tiny, wriggling nose, tipped with a tiny pink nose and flickering whiskers. Then a fat little body waddled into view, and Shion smiled. Mice were not necessarily uncommon in No.6, especially not in Lost Town, but the Elite members living in Chronos rarely saw them. This particular one—sleek and black, grape-colored irises and a long, thin tail—came to Shion’s window almost every night. Sometimes Shion had little treats to rest on the outer sill, and other times he just enjoyed sitting with his head resting on his arms and just watching the little mouse clean her tiny face with translucent claws.

 

Shion adored the mouse. He’d never given her a name, considering the only name he could think of whenever he stared at the mouse was _Nezumi_. Nezumi meant “rat”, he knew, but rats and mice were often confused for one another in Lost Town. The last time Shion had gone to visit Safu, nearly three months ago, a small brown mouse had dashed between her shoes and into a small crevice in one of the buildings, and Safu had danced out of the way with a piercing, “Oh my gosh, is that a _rat?_ ” And Shion had tried not to laugh, because as funny as Safu’s reaction had been, her irritation wasn’t worth dealing with.

 

Tonight Shion had no snacks for the little creature. He removed his hand from the pane of glass and smiled at the mouse, who sat in front of him and scratched behind her little ear. He chuckled, a low sound in the back of his throat.

 

Shion thought of Nezumi often, but never as often as he did when staring at the little mouse. Sometimes the roll of thunder or the heavy thrum of rain made him remember the icy, winter-like scent of Nezumi’s hair, but for some reason, whenever Shion looked at the black mouse and her quick movements, he felt as if Nezumi were closeby rather than somewhere outside the wall. He didn’t want to think that Nezumi could be dead in a ditch somewhere, or wandering about with his mouth half-open, crimson irises darting back and forth in search of something to sink his teeth into.

 

Watching the little mouse moving just beyond his reach, Shion waited and rested his head on his arms, trying to ignore the nightmarish images his mind conjured.

 

**~ * ~ * ~ * ~**

 

Shion knew the precise moment Rashi entered the housing unit, because the cheerful tittering of the others cleaning the foyer below had long-since stopped, and the loud _click_ of the front door sounded uncommonly loud in the otherwise silent house.

 

A shock of panic shivered up the back of his neck—he schooled his expression into something relaxed. Rashi would figure out he’d shirked his duties if he came downstairs with a terrified gleam in his eyes.

 

He quickly stepped out of his bedroom, shutting the door behind him without a sound. He hurried over to the room next to his and peeked inside; with a sigh, he realized Yamase was still asleep. He made a distressed groaning sound in his throat, his shoulders quaking. Nothing had changed. Shion exhaled quietly and hurried to the top of the stairs.

 

He hadn’t told any of the others that he would be heading to his room instead of going to check on Yamase. But Rashi would want an update on the “new one’s condition”, and Shion would be expected to respond as if he’d been obeying his orders and waiting patiently inside Yamase’s bedroom the whole night.

 

Shion didn’t have to look at the clock to know that it was close to five in the morning. He’d been too distracted; he was certain he’d drifted off somewhere between his nightmarish daydreams and his time watching the little black mouse.

 

He swept down the stairs without looking at Rashi—he spotted the tall, dark figure standing by the coat rack. Rashi demanded gracefulness from the ex-criminals, since clumsiness was reserved for the lesser citizens of Lost Town. Shion stepped down on the bottom stair, eyes lowered, and sunk into a deep bow. Rashi’s boots, made of the finest, most expensive black leather available in No.6, were all Shion could see of him for a moment.

 

“Up,” came Rashi’s deep voice from directly above his head. There was no inflection in his voice; Shion had no way to tell if Rashi knew he’d shirked his responsibilities. Rashi reacted negatively to insubordination, but he wouldn’t punish Shion if he hadn’t done anything to warrant it. He’d already been punished for assisting an Outsider—he didn’t need to be punished for also ignoring orders.

 

Shion moved out of his bow as gracefully as he had dipped into it, only raising his eyes to Rashi’s steel-green eyes when he was upright. He studied Rashi’s expression carefully, but as usual, there was nothing to read. The leader of the Security Bureau officers had trained himself well. He hadn’t changed in the four years since he’d sentenced Shion to work for the Bureau.

 

It was quite early in the morning, well before dawn, but Rashi was already dressed in his uniform. A crisp black shirt with golden trim, sleek black trousers and heavy boots. The ends of his blond hair dripped with water—he’d been showering before wandering into Lost Town, no doubt.

 

“The others have gone to bed, yes?” asked Rashi, although Shion knew he didn’t have to answer. Rashi knew the sleep-schedules of the ex-criminals as well as he knew the rest of No.6. Shion didn’t want to believe he’d placed cameras around the housing unit, although Shion wouldn’t be surprised. “And what of the new one, that Yamase boy?”

 

“He’s still asleep,” said Shion confidently. He’d checked—he guessed Yamase would still be sleeping if Rashi wanted to go upstairs and check, also. “He spent the whole day mourning. He fell asleep a few hours ago.”

 

“Good.” No scolding came, so Shion figured Rashi didn’t know he’d abandoned his duties. “His progress?”

 

“He’s accepted it, I think. He’ll most likely join the others in their chores tomorrow. We’ll adjust him to the sleep-schedule you’ve designed for him, sir.”

 

“Excellent,” said Rashi. His steel-colored eyes flickered. His expression shifted from impassivity to a pleasant little smile, and Shion struggled to keep himself from trembling. “Tell me, Shion—when was the last time you visited your mother?”

 

“Two weeks ago,” Shion said, a twisting array of excitement and terror building despite his effort to stop it. He kept his expression blank, chin raised and eyes firmly locked on Rashi’s bespectacled gaze.

 

“Hmm, I see.” Rashi glanced around at the scrubbed-clean foyer. He looked at the dusted windows, the pale tiles on the floor, up into the rafters where lamps lingered. And then Rashi turned his hard gaze back to Shion. “Impressive work, Shion.”

 

“Thank you sir,” Shion remarked, “but it was Camden, Luca, and the twins who cleaned the foyer. I spent the evening watching over Yamase.” _Not entirely true, but what Rashi doesn’t know won’t kill him—or get me in trouble_.

 

“You’re a modest young man, Shion. I’m impressed. It seems you’ve learned quite a bit during your time here with us.” He stared over Shion’s head up into the rafters again, but that was the closest Shion had gotten to praise from Rashi since he’d been here. His spine straightened. There was something about Rashi’s tone, something Shion couldn’t place and couldn’t understand, but when Rashi spoke again it was gone. “Head to bed, and come to the Bureau at noon tomorrow. After your tasks, you may take the rest of the day to visit your mother.”

 

Shion bowed again, quickly, lowering his head to hide his face. He was afraid that, if Rashi saw his flushed face and happy expression, he would lose the reward he’d been given.

 

As he remained in that position, Rashi moved past him—and Shion felt him lay his hand on top of his head. The touch was feather-light, but it made Shion dizzy with happiness. Rashi’s approval meant he could visit his mother more often. Excited and weak with joy, Shion stayed in his bowing position while Rashi headed up the stairs to check on Yamase.

 

Shion stood up from his stooped-over position and smiled. His duty finished for the night, he wandered up the stairs to his own bedroom. He saw Rashi entering Yamase’s room. He remembered his conversation with the Security Bureau official the day after he’d moved into the housing unit. Rashi had stood over him in his bed, his pillow soaked through with bitter, hate-filled tears. “ _There is a reason why you are here_ ,” he’d said, words Shion had been expecting long before then. “ _Do you know it, yet?_ ”

 

Shion had looked up at him, perched on his elbows. His cheeks had stung with three days worth of endless wailing; he’d felt nothing, curled on his bed before the ice-cold leader of the Security officers. “ _I broke the laws of No.6, sir_.”

 

“ _And what law would that be, Shion?_ ”

 

“ _I allowed an Outsider to come into the city. I did not contact the Security Bureau. I assisted a VC in escaping justice, sir. I put all of No.6 in danger with my actions_.” The words had felt clunky and rehearsed, stumbling out of Shion’s mouth.

 

“ _You should consider yourself lucky that you’ve been given an opportunity to repent. I would advise you to make the most of your situation_.” His lips had curled into a vicious smile—even now, four years later, Shion still remembered it. “ _There are others here much like you, lawbreakers and the like, who have also been given the chance to repent. Take a lesson from them, child_.” Rashi had then tossed a white uniform on the foot of the bed and stalked out of the room. “ _Now clean yourself up. You begin work at noon_.”

 

Shion dismissed the memory with a wave of the hand. The past did not matter how. He’d spent four years in the housing unit, working as an errand-boy for the Security Bureau, permitted to see his mother and Safu only on the whims and “kindness” of Rashi. He supposed it could have been worse. In this, Rashi had been right on one thing—he should consider himself lucky.

 

He walked into his bedroom and silently shut the door behind him. The housing unit had no locks. Outside his window, the skies were still dark, the red-gold light of street lamps casting shadows through his room. He’d left the lamp at his bedside on. Stifling a yawn with one hand, Shion clicked the lamp off. The outside lamps provided more than enough light to slip out of his uniform and into an oversized gray shirt and black pants. He tugged the shirt into place.

 

On the window sill, the little black mouse had vanished. Shion would have liked to see her before she’d gone into the night, but he supposed she’d return soon enough. He should have considered himself fortunate enough to have enjoyed her company for the two hours he’d been lounging in his room instead of obeying Rashi’s orders.

 

Turning back his bedsheets, Shion climbed in. The cots were not comfortable by any means, but better still than sleeping on the hard, wooden floor. He pulled the scratchy blanket up to his chin and settled down. He turned away from the lights spilling in through the window.

 

And, like every night before it, as Shion drifted into pleasant, sleepy darkness, he allowed his mind to wander back to that fateful night four years ago, remembering the scents of ice and the comforting warmth of a body beneath his own.

 

**~ * ~ * ~ * ~**

 

On top of the solid, wooden roof of the run-down building, the little black mouse darted. Her agile feet caught the wood with tiny clack-clacks, unnoticed in the silent nighttime. She’d gone through the town enough times to know where there were cameras and where she would and would not be noticed. Mice weren’t spotted in No.6 all that easily—but she’d memorized the easiest routes to escape the city undetected, not for herself but for her beloved Master.

 

He’d tasked her with finding the best ways to sneak in and out of the walled city. No.6 was not nearly as sealed off as those loud fools in black uniforms made it seem. As the little mouse cleaned her face in the windows, she listened to the boastful mutterings of Security officers.

 

Her Master was right—the citizens of No.6 were morons. Her mind drifted momentarily to the auburn-haired boy sleeping in the housing unit before her feet. Well, all but one of them, she supposed. With a twitch of her nose, she darted into one of the many cracks in the wall. She had much to relay to her Master and not much time.

 

**~ * ~ * ~ * ~**

 

Chronos hadn’t changed in the four years since Shion had moved away. Beautiful crimson birds warbled song after song from the branches of dark branches, speckled with emerald, oval-shaped leaves. Once Shion had felt jealous of the creatures that could come and go over the wall as they pleased—but their songs filled him with hope that one day he, too, would find a way to get out of No.6.

 

Carefully tended gardens lined the fronts of milk-white buildings: yellow lilies and white, pink, and purple little flower buds nestled among grass plots. Perfect gray stones circled these gardens, cared for not by the citizens of Chronos, but by the tender hands of hired help from Lost Town.

 

Sweet fragrances from the flowers filled the air; Shion could barely smell the rotten stench of the dead beyond the wall. He couldn’t smell it often in Lost Town, but now and again a whiff of decaying flesh would wash over him, reminding him of the cold room beneath Security Bureau HQ. When that happened, Shion’s whole body would shiver, his vision tunneling, and he needed to sit down with his hands covering his mouth until the wave of nausea passed.

 

Shion had done this a million times before. Dressed in a white uniform not at all suited to the blistering sun overhead, with buttons and zippers that baked warm and unpleasant in the heat, he trekked from Lost Town to Chronos with his head held high, auburn hair tucked beneath a thick white cap.

 

He moved along with the other Lost Town workers for the first half of his journey. Merchants and bakery shop owners shuffled toward the prim and proper gardens and parks of Chronos. The customers in Lost Town were unable to provide the sort of revenue Lost Town business owners needed in order to operate their businesses, and as such, many owners trekked daily into Chronos, rain or sleet or shine, and sold whatever they could to the disinterested Elites.

 

Shion had nothing to sell, and as such, when the merchants veered off toward the central parks to set up their little vending carts and folding tables, he turned to the left and marched down an alley. The Security Building was in the middle of No.6—the housing unit in Lost Town was toward the wall, so Shion traveled roughly two and a half miles into Chronos nearly every day.

 

Returning to Chronos yet again, it was as if the undead monsters outside No.6 didn’t exist anywhere but in the depths of the database. Shion had spent enough time in Lost Town to recognize the families who still hadn’t moved on from the tragedies of the First Strike. An old woman who lived in the run-down apartment next to Karan’s bakery spent her time sitting outside on the stoop, asking if anyone had seen her son. He’d disappeared somewhere in the First Strike, a small infant swept away by a stampeding crowd, and she’d gone mad long ago.

 

The black dome of the Security Bureau Building loomed over him like a tall beast, sunlight glimmering off the high walls and glass windows. Shion squinted into the blinding glare bouncing off the walls long before he went inside; long ago, when No.6 was being constructed, the Security Bureau Building had been designed as a safe-house to ward off the Bees until the walls were completed. While the rest of the buildings in No.6 were painted white or cream, to portray an air of innocence and safety, the Security Building remained black and glossy—to remind the citizens of No.6 of the horrors that lurked just beyond their protection.

 

Being set in Chronos as it was, the Security Bureau was set on a marble dais made entirely of smooth white cobblestones, so smooth that Shion had slipped on them his first time traveling on his own to the building. He had hence learned how to shuffle slowly, which way to plant his feet so the ground below would not reach up to yank him down.

 

Shion stopped at the front of the Security Building doors, where two officers, large men with cropped-short brown hair and sunglasses, stood with their arms folded. “Identification,” said the one on the right, sounding bored, which, Shion supposed, he probably was.

 

Shion held up his wrist, displaying the white identification bracelet. His old one had been taken when he and Karan were removed from Chronos and replaced with a less expensive model. The database worked, and a few calling frequencies still functioned as they should, so Shion supposed he had nothing to complain about. His ID bracelet had a crimson stripe next to the screen, branding him as an ex-criminal employed by the Security Bureau.

 

“Move along,” sighed the officer on the right, gesturing with a lazy wave of the hand. Shion nodded his head to him and stepped forward. The automatic doors yawned open around him and he marched forward. His heart pounded in his throat, drowning out the sounds of the Security Bureau Headquarters.

 

He’d come into the Security Bureau enough times in the past four years that the flurry of motion no longer startled him as it once had. Ex-criminals were few and quick, running around in black or white uniforms with red stripes on their ID bracelets, finishing up their errands and tasks for the day. The employed officers were members of the lower-Elite class, and as such were easy enough to spot among the crowd. Dripping in sashes and badges and gold or silver ornaments, the Security officers lean against the smooth walls, bored in the air-conditioned room and wishing to be anywhere else.

 

It was enough to make Shion sick to his stomach. The citizens of Lost Town struggled to survive every day, desperate to sell their wares and make it through another day on minuscule rations, while the Elites in the wealthier levels of No.6 could afford to toss handfuls of money away on useless trinkets and baubles that would likely be forgotten in a day.

 

Shion glanced around the dome and took note of the ex-criminals and the officers. He didn’t see Rashi in the foyer, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t nearby. In the four years since he’d been sentenced to live in the housing unit, Shion had learned that Rashi could show up at any moment, spilling out of the walls or appearing around a street corner as if he could materialize wherever with only a thought. It both fascinated and terrified Shion.

 

Shion turned to look at the main desk, a large slab of black marble with a bored-looking blond woman sitting behind it. Her long, lacquered nails clack against a keyboard, the screen reflecting in her spectacles. But it was not the woman who caught his attention—it was the girl standing next to the desk, hands folding in her lap as if she’d been waiting there a long time.

 

Safu hadn’t changed since the last time Shion had seen her. Half a head shorter than him, dressed in a black sweater and a pleated red skirt, a long scarf wrapped around her throat despite the blistering heat outside the building. She looked around the dome, up to the high windows, and then down to the door when Shion walked in. Her dark eyes lit up. “Shion!” Smiling wide, she skipped across the smooth tiles to his side. He was surprised she didn’t slip in the high-heeled purple sandals she wore. “There you are—your boss said you’d be in around noon. How have you been?”

 

Shion caught Safu as she threw her arms around his shoulders. “Safu, what are you doing here? Um, I’m fine, just going to do a job.”

 

“A job” usually referred to carrying packages to other business, organizing paperwork, or bringing bright red envelopes to the men stationed at the gates leading to the paths to No.5. When Shion wasn’t cleaning around the building, he did jobs for Rashi.

 

Safu kept her arms around his shoulders and leaned back to peer into his eyes. He had to look down, and the action left a painful crick in his neck. “Your boss said you would just be delivering envelopes to the Wall Guard today, and that I was more than welcome to accompany you.”

 

“ _Rashi_ said that?” Shion looked around. An odd statement, especially from the leader of the Security Bureau. He still didn’t see the blond officer; his gaze drifted to the ceiling, vaguely wondering if Rashi were watching him through one of the security cameras peppered around the building.

 

“Yes,” Safu replied, swishing the ends of her chin-length hair as she nodded. “Considering the circumstances, he said it would be OK this one time.”

 

“ _Circumstances?_ ” A cold bolt of terror shot through Shion’s spine. “What—what circumstances?”

 

Safu pressed her lips into a thin line, but when it looked like she was going to say something, the door opened and a security official wandered in with a small pile of red envelopes, wrapped about in white string. He gave Shion a sharp, stern look, and then disappeared through another door. Safu untangled her arms from around his neck and took a step back. “Let’s just go deliver these envelopes. We can talk after.”

 

“Oh, um, OK…?”

 

Safu hurried over to the stack of letter, snatched them up, and deposited them in Shion’s hands. Then she was quickly out the door, with Shion scrambling to follow.

 

She didn’t say anything until she and Shion were far away from the Security Building, passing by one of the huge gardens where a collection of merchants had set up shop for the day. The Summer Garden was kept in careful splendor year-round, even when ice crystals formed on the flowers and leached life from the grass.

 

Safu guided Shion past a splendid bakery table laid out with cakes dusted in gold and silver decorations, a woman presenting fruit baskets and bouquets of brightly-colored flowers. A young couple called out to groups of passing Elites, gesturing to lovely dresses hanging from silver hooks. Shion turned to watch as the Elites strode by the tables without a second glance.

 

“You seem like you’re doing well,” said Safu. She brushed her shoulder against his; he shifted the envelopes in his arms so he could walk comfortably and not worry about dropping them.

 

“It’s a living, I suppose,” Shion replied. He squinted at the red envelopes. They had no addresses, but he’d been instructed to bring them to the Wall Guard. The main building was all the way on the opposite side of No.6, a mile from the Security Building. “You don’t have to walk with me, if you don’t want to. It’s hot out today—you could wait for me in Headquarters until I get back.”

 

“No, I’m all right.” Safu gave the scarf around her neck a harsh tug. She had a water bottle strapped to her hip, and uncapped it to take a deep swig. She offered it to Shion, and he took it with an appreciate nod. The water felt cool and refreshing as it slid down his throat.

 

He handed the bottle back to Safu, and she said, “Your boss seems like a nice guy. It was nice of him to give you a job—you know, after you and Karan moved.”

 

“Uh, yeah. Nice of him.” Shion pursed his lips. He hadn’t told Safu about why he’d been employed by the Security Bureau. She knew that he’d broken the law, and that there was someone called Nezumi involved, but he’d never given her details, and she’d never asked.

 

“How’s Karan?” asked Safu.

 

“Mom’s alright. I saw her two weeks ago. After my job today, Rashi said I’d be allowed to go spend the rest of the day with her. She’s been working on trying to perfect her cherry cake recipe.” The last time he’d gone to visit Karan, they’d spent the entirety of the building mixing flour and sugar and fruit preserves in bowls in an attempt to see what new creations Karan could add to her bakery list.

 

Safu’s dark eyes widened in surprise. “They’re letting you go see your mom?” Her expression shifted for just a moment, as if she were worried, but it was gone a moment later. “That’s—that’s great, Shion. I’m happy for you.”

 

“Safu, what’s going on with you today?” They passed by the Gardens, and Shion turned away from the hordes of merchants and disinterested Elites. Safu looked away from him, chewing on her lower lip. He stepped up on a long stretch of stairs, winding up into the higher levels of Chronos.

 

The impossible world of the Elites became clearer as he and Safu stepped through the shadows; in elegant, well-decorated and comfortable air-conditioned homes, Elites sat next to each other with bored looks and more jewelry than Shion could count.

 

He moved quietly through Chronos, careful of the small black security cameras speckled in the higher parts of the buildings. The threat of the Security Bureau was clear: _We are always watching_.

 

“Shion,” said Safu with a low, desperate sigh. He stopped and stared at her. She stood two steps below him, her head lowered in the shadows. She loomed younger than she was; her knees shifted together, hands wringing in front of her stomach. “Listen, I just wanted to tell you that—well—you see, I—”

 

Safu was cut off by a sudden, loud, wailing siren. She whipped her head around to stare at the cameras, at the speakers set next to them, and her eyes were blown wide. She’s hands tightened on the envelope, and he spun around to stare down the long stairs and into the depths of Chronos.

 

Over the speakers, he heard crackling static, and a moment later, Rashi’s voice spilled out throughout No.6 like the booming command of a god: “ _Citizens of No.6! Thirteen minutes ago, there was an attack on the Southern Wall_.”

 

Shion’s blood ran cold.

 

“ _This appears to be the work of a series of rogue bounty hunters—not in the employ of the City States. The Wall Guard has been dispatched to Lost Town to handle the situation. Citizens are advised to seek out the nearest safe-house and get inside immediately. Citizens are advised to not wander outside until Security officials declare the area secure_.”

 

The red envelopes fluttered to the ground.

 

Safu’s hand clamped down on Shion’s wrist. Her nails dug into his flesh, painful and sudden, but Shion couldn’t think of anything except of his mother’s bakery in Lost Town. “Shion,” she whispered urgently, “we have to get to a safehouse. Come on, let’s—”

 

“Mom,” Shion choked.

 

“She’ll be fine, Shion. She’ll get to a safehouse. Come on, we have to—”

 

Piercing screams erupted from the Gardens below the stairs.

 

Shion moved without thinking. He shoved away from Safu, tearing his wrist free, and bolted down the steps. He ignored her shrieks to his retreating back, pulse pounding in his ears, drowning out the panicked shouts and horrified bellows of the Elites.

 

The impossible had happened.

 

No.6 was under attack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for joining me, everyone! No.6 is under attack, and oh no, Karan is in danger! Next chapter, Shion races down into Lost Town to try and find his mother, and what horrors will await him there?
> 
> And when the hell are we going to see Nezumi again? Next chapter? Maybe? Perhaps!
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has stuck with this story from the beginning. I'm thankful for the people who have commented, bookmarked, and stuck by me from the beginning. Please continue to enjoy this story as it updates, and hopefully I will be able to get the next chapter up in less time than it took this chapter to come out.


	5. Breaching the Wall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The panic he’d been bred to feel in these situations did not come. Instead, Shion slowly rose to his feet, unable to feel Safu’s hands on his shoulders, jerking him toward the safety of a shop. He tilted his head to the brilliant blue skies. A part of his brain urged him forward, mimicking Safu’s terrified shouting; urging him to take action and run. Run with the rest of them before it was too late. Before slobbering, black-mouthed beasts with crimson eyes and white hair swarmed into Chronos and overtook him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good evening, everyone! Thank you all for joining me for this chapter. Some of you may have noticed that the number of total chapters in " _ripped apart_ " have changed from a finite number of a question mark.
> 
> I initially had a set idea of how many chapters I wanted to include in this story, but after working through this chapter and going over my outline, I realized that eleven chapters (ten excluding the prologue) would not be enough to complete the first part of this trilogy, so hopefully people will continue to enjoy the number of chapters in this story.
> 
> In the last chapter, No.6 was attacked by Bees, and Shion heard an announcement that there was a breach in the walls. In this chapter, we see the outcome of that attack. And, with luck, someone will return!
> 
> This chapter also introduced our primary antagonist for this story—shockingly enough, Rashi is not the worst monster in this story. He's pretty bad, but there is someone, or _something_ , much worse than him out there. In fact, we have already met this being.
> 
> Thank you for joining me, and I hope that you all enjoy this chapter!

For the men and women of Lost Town, autumn in No.6 meant celebration. It signified having survived another winter, thriving in a world protected from the wandering death outside. Despite Lost Town being filled to the brim with those who could not afford to live as the Elites did, of those who had been driven half-mad with the loss of family and friends during the First Strike, autumn was often filled with happiness—marriages and courtships and shops unveiling new items to sell until the first snowfall.

 

As Shion dashed down the stairs, sprinting full speed through Chronos and toward the long stretch of cracked cobblestones leading to Lost Town, sirens wailed throughout No.6. The dry, rattling sound rocked through his bones, shaking his teeth in his skull.

 

“Shion—Shion, come back!” Safu shrieked after him. Somehow over the loud whines of the sirens and the panicked screaming of citizens tossing their wares to the grounds and making mad dashes to stores, he heard the familiar clacking of her heels on pavement.

 

He stumbled on loose rocks, crashing onto the ground with a pained hiss. His knees scraped across the ground and his fall gave Safu enough time to collapse at his side. Her thin hands clenched his shoulders, sharp nails digging into his flesh. His sore hands trembled and caught at the gravel; he needed to get up. Panicked men and women surged around them; Shion was surprised he and Safu weren’t trampled in the hysteria.

 

“Come on, Shion, we have to find shelter,” Safu whispered urgently in his ear. She began to attempt hauling him to his feet. “Your mom will be fine—come _on!_ ”

 

Shion’s fingers played with a broken shred of gravel. It had crumbled apart over the years, an imperfection in the otherwise flawless section of No.6. The edges of the marble were sharp; a thin slice of red appeared on the pad of his index finger, but he felt no pain.

 

Time felt as if it had slowed down, stretching taut like a thread. The siren blocked out the sounds of people surging around them, throwing glances over their shoulders and bellowing in horror. The blistering heat of the summer sun did nothing to warm him. Shion watched the panic as the sounds died down, until he felt as if he were watching them move underwater without a sound.

 

The panic he’d been bred to feel in these situations did not come. Instead, Shion slowly rose to his feet, unable to feel Safu’s hands on his shoulders, jerking him toward the safety of a shop. He tilted his head to the brilliant blue skies. A part of his brain urged him forward, mimicking Safu’s terrified shouting; urging him to take action and run. Run with the rest of them before it was too late. Before slobbering, black-mouthed beasts with crimson eyes and white hair swarmed into Chronos and overtook him.

 

Behind him, Safu’s lips were inches from his ear. His name fell on deaf ears; out of the corner of his eye, he saw tears streaming down Safu’s cheeks. He wondered why she was crying. The Bees weren’t here yet. She still had time to get away.

 

Over the distracting, droning shriek of the siren, Shion began to wonder if he’d waited long enough. Four years ago in the pouring rain, in a warm bedroom in Chronos, an ice-scented boy, dripping wet and bleeding, had come to him in need of help. Well, the situation was reversed—now Shion was the one in need of help, and a hollow part of him clung to the hope that, this time, Nezumi would come to him to rescue him.

 

How bad was the breach in Lost Town? Had the entire wall been blasted away, and Bees were pouring into the city like water into a bucket? Or was it something small, a crack allowing a single Bee to slip inside, quickly and easily dispatched by a hired bounty hunter. Rashi’s words echoed through his head: _This appears to be the work of a series of rogue bounty hunters—not in the employ of the City States_.

 

Bounty hunters had caused this? Shion couldn’t believe that. If bounty hunters not employed by the City States had the ability to destroy a wall created by No.6, why had they waited until now to do it?

 

Shion reached up to his shoulder and took Safu’s hand from his shoulder. He dropped his fingers to his side, his wrist thumping against his hip. He heard her give a confused huff; she’d managed to move him an inch, but not much farther. Rising on shaking feet, Shion wandered into the crowd—toward the source of their panic, to the path leading to Lost Town.

 

“Shion, what are you doing?” Safu started to dart after him—and the panicked crowd swept her up toward one of the shops. “Shion—Shion, no—no, _no_ , come back! _Shion!_ ”

 

All around him, the citizens of Chronos and the merchants from Lost Town ran in jagged lines. Shion watched them go in slow motion, stepping to the side when the need rose, watching a young girl sprint by. She’d come from Lost Town—he recognized her from the few times he’d been able to see his mother. Dirty blond pigtails swished around her face as she rushed to the security of a jewelry shop.

 

Shion wandered off into the shadows of an alley, out of the path of a shrieking patch of citizens from the main park. They glanced over their shoulders—and Shion thought, _If the Bees are coming from the Southern Wall, then they can’t be this far up already_. The Southern Wall was roughly two miles away from the Security Building, and even farther from where Shion now stood.

 

Another little girl, with dark hair and a beautiful white sundress, raced in front of the alley hand-in-hand with a red-headed boy. Shion didn’t recognize either of them, but judging from their clothing and the cleanliness of their hair, he imagined they were the children of two Elites. The red-headed boy tripped and fell, scraping his knee open on the marble. The girl paused, noticing her hand was empty.

 

She whirled to glance over her shoulder—found her friend on the ground, his hand reaching for her to help him back to his feet—and she took a quick step toward him. And then, all at once, her body went stiff with primal, unnatural terror.

 

Wetness appeared on the front of her white skirt, and she scrambled backward. The redhead turned his head and flopped onto his back, using the heels of his hands to drag himself across the marble. Shion couldn’t see what caused them such terror. _It cannot be a Bee. The Southern Wall is too far. They couldn’t have come this far so soon_ —

 

A sudden flash of black came from the left side of the alley, out of Shion’s line of sight. The sounds of chains rattling echoed over the blaring scream of the sirens. Something huge and quick fell on the red-headed boy before Shion could even begin to think to move forward and help him up.

 

Shion’s body went rigid and he shrunk into the shadow of the alley. It was a tall, crooked thing with steel-gray hair dripping down the length of its bent back. Long, black-tipped fingers— _Claws, those are claws_ —dug into the redhead’s shoulders, blood welling beneath the wounds. It darted forward with a flash of white teeth, like a snake striking.

 

Chains rattled. Shion tasted metal in his mouth. _Not a Bee. That’s_ not _a Bee_ . He’d seen enough pictures in the database. He’d seen the crimson eyes and snow-white hair and slobbering mouths more than enough times to know that the thing kneeling astride the redhead was something _much worse than a Bee_.

 

The little girl shrieked, and the thing snapped its head up. Shion froze. Its face was human, twisted and pale and _horrifying_ , but human all the same, and in another flash of black, it pounced from the corpse of the boy, a gaping red hole where the redhead’s throat had once been, and fell on the girl.

 

The hairs on the back of Shion’s neck stood on end. _Escape. Run. Get away_ . His hand reached for the wall, the smooth stones sliding beneath his fingertips. He watched the sleek _thing_ slice through the girl’s throat as if she were constructed of wet paper. She fell without a sound—or perhaps she lacked a throat in which to make any sort of sound. The gray-haired monstrosity ripped its mouth back, taking a hunk of wet, crimson flesh with it, and snapped its mouth open once, twice, three times, in a grotesque mockery of chewing.

 

 _God, get me out of here. I have to escape_. Shion slunk into the shadows, pressing his spine to the wall. The sun beat overhead; sweat trickled down his spine, plastering his hair to his forehead. It was sixty-three feet to the end of the alley where the twisted monster sat astride the little girl’s corpse, and another twenty to the other end, where Shion would be able to flee.

 

The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Between heartbeats, he took note of the sirens wailing, of the people shrieking at the sight before them—or perhaps at more Bees approaching that Shion could not see from his secluded hiding spot in the alley.

 

He slid his feet along the stone. The flat soles of his shoes glided as if he were wearing a set of skates, a thing he had never been able to afford while living in Lost Town. The ground shifted beneath him, helping him to shuffle along to the end of the alley. He barely felt to be moving—keeping his neck still, eyes firmly planted on the abomination kneeling in front of the alleyway, hands trembling at his sides. If it turned around and saw him, he was finished. It would clear the sixty feet between them in a flash of black and rattling chains, and he wouldn’t see it coming.

 

Shion expected it to lift its head and glare down the alley, to spot him and come charging in a blur of black and drive him to the ground in the same manner it had driven down the redhead and the girl. Instead, it rose up from atop the girl’s corpse and stood, twisted black-capped claws stretching out at its sides, each finger long and sharp as a dagger.

 

Even in his panic, Shion took in image of the creature standing before him. He’d never seen something resembling a human quite so tall, not even in Lost Town, where many of the older men were burly and built like barrels. Thin as a pole, bones in its elbows and wrists jutting out, it moved with an awkward grace that seemed less mechanical than Shion would expect for something so inhuman. From this distance he couldn’t quite make out its face—but he could see the scarlet smears where its mouth was, could make out two black bullet holes where its eyes sat.

 

With a grumbling snarl emanating from within its chest, the monstrosity—because it couldn’t be a Bee, it just _couldn’t be_ —turned toward the screaming mass of citizens flooding up the length of shops where Shion had just come from and charged.

 

Shion’s mouth went dry as sand. His tongue felt heavy. In his mind’s eye, he watched the monster turn again and again, its bent back turning toward the alley for a brief moment, but long enough for Shion to make out heavy chains around its throat and wrists, the familiar black uniform shining with gold cuffs and accents in the sunlight.

 

_Why is it wearing a Security uniform?_

 

He turned and ran. Screams erupted from the mouth of the alley, the corpse with crimson hair on the ground twitched his right hand—and Shion took off as fast as his legs would carry him. He skittered out of the alley, his flat shoes sliding on the smooth ground, and he took off in the direction of Lost Town. He had to go. He had to find his mom.

 

**~ * ~ * ~ * ~**

 

The bellowing shriek of the sirens drowned out the sounds of panic coming from behind him; as Shion ran to the smaller section of No.6, where Lost Town lay spread out like a bowl, he wondered why the screaming only seemed to be coming from behind him. The farther he got from Chronos, the softer it became. If the Southern Wall has been breached, shouldn’t it be _louder_ in Lost Town?

 

Unless everyone in Lost Town had already been taken out by the chain-wrapped monstrosity ripping its way through Chronos—unless _everyone_ in Lost Town had already been pulled from humanity and risen again as a red-eyed, black-mouthed monster.

 

An image flashed in front of his face: a tall woman in a tattered apron, stumbling forward, white hair tucked beneath a floral bandana, black-dripping mouth opening and closing, teeth clacking, crimson eyes darting. His heart clenched. _Mom_. No. No it wasn’t possible.

 

The ground gave way to cracked cobblestones and dirt so suddenly, Shion nearly slipped. Once he oriented himself on the familiar ground of Lost Town— _Have I really run all this distance?_ —he took off in a sprint in the direction of his mother’s bakery. Panic urged him forward, the gripping ground gave him the strength to push his way forward. His hands clenched and, for the first time, Shion realized he had no weapon to defend against whatever was waiting for him.

 

Since working at the Security Bureau, Shion had never been trained to fight. No.6 was protected. The wall would never cave. And on the off chance something happened, the Wall Guard would protect them. Strong men trained as sharpshooters and hand-to-hand combatants, seasoned veterans who had fought in the First Strike, or former bounty hunters employed by the City States. But now the unthinkable had happened—No.6’s impenetrable wall had been damaged, the Wall Guard was nowhere Shion turned to look, and heaps of Bees had swarmed in, along with whatever that _thing_ was in Chronos.

 

Shion’s steps slowed for just a moment, trotting through the thin streets. Vacant shops reflected sunlight at him, casting odd shadows. He spotted dark mounds sprawled on the ground, tell-tale streaks of crimson on the dirt. His heart pounded in his chest, the rhythmic _thump-thump_ drowning out the sirens. Trembling hands came to rest on his thighs.

 

Don’t look. Out of the corner of his eye, leaning against a cracked cement wall, one of the mounds shifted with a low, guttural groan. Dark clothing obscured the whiteness of her hair, and the jerking motions, mechanical and moving without thinking, urged Shion to keep walking forward. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he should run—had to keep moving, or the white-haired monsters who descend upon him—but a dark thought kept him from hurrying.

 

_Hold on a second...If the Southern Wall was just breached...then how did that thing get all the way to Chronos?_

 

There could be no denying it was fast. He’d watched it zip from the redhead to the little girl in a matter of seconds, but could it be possible that it had caused all this destruction and still made it to Chronos in the time since Rashi raised the alarm?

 

Shion’s stomach dropped.

 

_What if Rashi didn’t raise the alarm—until that thing made it to Chronos?_

 

Something brushed through his hair—fingers, catching at the ends of his hair, reaching for him—and then he was running, faster than before, spurred by an age-old terror set deep in his body, instinctual to the core. He didn’t have the strength to look behind him, to turn and see what had managed to walk up without a sound and put itself right at his back without him ever noticing.

 

His feet pounded against the dirt, leaping over dark mounds on the ground, sprawled bits of something that had perhaps once been human. He didn’t stop to check. Vision blurred by terror, mind warped from the sudden terror of it all— _Not prepared for this, we were not prepared for this_ —Shion stumbled over something jutting up from the ground.

 

Catching the ground on the palms of his hands, heels scraping in the gravel, Shion bit back a scream and pushed himself to his feet. _Have to find Mom. Have to get out of here_. Driven by need, Shion shoved himself forward.

 

 _Everywhere_.

 

 _Shifting mounds of darkness everywhere_.

 

Shion’s fingers reached for the stone wall of _The Golden Dragon_ , a small cafe set deep in Lost Town that sold pastries and coffee drinks. The pads of his fingertips brushed the glass window—and inside, something dark and massive slammed into the glass, cracking it with a low, guttural snarl.

 

He did not scream. His breath caught in his throat, a whistling sound of terror, and he veered to the right and tore into one of the alleys and out the other end. He dodged whatever lay on the ground, ignoring the flashes of white he saw hunched in corners. Sounds erupted around him, peppered through the blaring of sirens: thick crunching, wet smacking, small growls and groans.

 

He couldn’t look. For a moment he wasn’t racing through Lost Town; he was back in the cell beneath the Security Bureau building, seconds away from being ripped apart. The Bee in the shadows reached for his face, chains rattling, mouth snapping opened and closed—

 

 _Chains_.

 

The monster in Chronos, chains wrapped around its throat and wrists, ripped through the little girl’s neck. Chains screamed as it jumped.

 

 _No—that’s not possible_.

 

Shion ducked under a downed pole, knocked loose by something heavy crashing into it, and stumbled again. He pushed himself up to his feet, eyes darting around. He refused to see the white-haired monsters lurking in the shadows, teeth sinking into the wet flesh of a body on the ground. Shoving himself forward, Shion raced by one of the open doors of the shops—

 

And felt something grasp his arm and yank him into the darkness.

 

He fought. Without screaming, without panicking and shutting down, Shion kicked his feet and swung his hands and aimed for the stomach and eyes and throat. This would be it. He’d end here, but dammit, he was going to take this thing with him when he did.

 

The door to the shop slammed closed, the siren outside becoming muffled, and finally free from the noises going on outside—freed from the grip of panic—Shion could finally, _finally_ hear a voice calling to him: “Shion, Shion, stop—it’s _me!_ ”

 

He froze with his fist in mid-air. Bees couldn’t talk, could they? Raising his eyes, daring to hope, Shion caught the sight of straight black hair and auburn eyes, filled with terror, staring into his own. His mouth, which had been dry, could barely form the name: “Yamase?”

 

“Thank God,” said Yamase with a shuddering sob. He released his grip on Shion’s wrist, and Shion dropped his arm to his side, his wrist thumping against his hip. “I saw you coming—didn’t think I was going to grab you in time.”

 

“Yamase, what are you doing here?”

 

“Hiding.”

 

Shion’s stomach dropped. “The Southern Wall—over the intercoms, they said there was a breach—”

 

“What are you talking about?” Yamase’s dark eyes darted to the window; with the door closed, the sounds from outside were muffled. In the shadows of the shop, one Shion did not recognize, the tall white beasts passing in front of the windows could not peer inside and see them. An elderly woman shuffled by, mouth clacking against the air. “Shion, the Southern Wall is _fine_ . But this—this destruction happened after a huge van came. It showed up in the middle of Lost Town, and then the back opened up, and this _thing_ was shoved out, and then it just—”

 

“Wait, _what?_ ” Shion’s blood went cold, his throat constricting. “When did this happen?”

 

“About an hour ago,” Yamase whimpered.

 

Shion’s heart clenched. _An hour?_ Shortly after he’d left Lost Town to head to the Security Building. That thing with the chains had been ripping through Lost Town for the better part of an _hour_ , and they were only just now hearing about it?

 

“Yamase—,” Shion gasped. “Yamase, where are the others?”

 

Yamase’s dark eyes flickered with fresh tears. He scrubbed the back of his palm against his raw eyelids. “They tried to help people evacuate, after that chained thing showed up. Ryane and Rayce, they—God, Shion, they got taken down by that _monster_.”

 

Shion continued to stare at Yamase—trying to understand, trying to remember what Ryane and Rayce looked like. He could see their crimson hair, their mischievous smiles. The redhead, whose corpse rested back in Chronos—unless he was now a shambling white-haired, red-eyed mess—had he been a brother? A cousin? He wanted to cry for them, but the tears refused to come.

 

Yamase stepped away from him, a sudden loud thump coming from the door. Cursing under his breath, he ran for an abandoned counter; Shion looked around, finally recognizing that he was in another pastry shop. He’d never been here before, preferring the familiar taste of his mother’s homemade goods. He stood against the wall in a daze, watching Yamase sprint around the room in a desperate attempt to unearth supplies, weapons, a way to survive.

 

“Is anybody left?” whispered Shion. He turned and glanced out the window. Behind the glass, a white-haired monster smacked its hands against the solid panes. Its lips left black tar streaks where it bit. Empty crimson eyes glimmered in the shadows. “Anybody at all?”

 

“Camden made it out,” Yamase muttered through his teeth, angrily tossing aside a paring knife. Sharp, but not a decent weapon. He’d need something bigger to fight off a Bee. “But I lost track of him. Shion, come help me!”

 

Shion could see the way his hands shook. He went to Yamase’s side, his own hands still, and dug through the cupboards and drawers. He set aside anything that wasn’t longer than the length of his hand.

 

Yamase muttered under his breath, shooting terrified glances to the windows. Shion did not turn—refused to look at the smearing of tar on the glass, at the fists banging on the closed door. He no longer heard the screams of the siren.

 

He felt nothing. Behind him Yamase made big gestures, emptying the contents of the drawers onto the floor and cursing beneath his breath. Shion slid his hands into a drawer of his own and produced a long chef’s knife. The blade, stainless steel, reflected the dim sunlight filtering in through the large glass window. A dark shape shambled through the dirt streets, a low groan rumbling through the walls. Shion clutched the slick hilt in his sweat-soaked palm and pressed his lips into a thin line. His mom. He needed to go to the bakery and find his mom and get out of here.

 

Behind him, Yamase produced a rust-coated cleaver from the back of one of the cabinets. He cursed, but with no other cabinets to search, he decided the heavy metal hacking tool was, perhaps, the best he’d find, given the circumstances. He grabbed Shion’s shoulder and said something to him, mouth working in huge, exaggerated gestures, but his words jumbled in Shion’s head, drowned out by the siren. A small part of Shion wondered if he should ask Yamase to repeat himself—but then he was being guided toward the door, and he shoved aside all thoughts beyond escape.

 

The hairs on the back of Shion’s neck spiked at the brisk warmth, eyes squinting in the sunlight. Yamase stood at his side, head darting around. The street was not empty; Shion could see, out the corner of his eye, the dark shapes of Bees lumbering around the dirt road, in between gaps in the store fronts, dragging heavy bodies over the ground.

 

Something shifted next to him—a huge, willowy figure dressed all in black. Shion heard the low thrum of a shout over the wailing siren, and in his panic-dumbed mind, it almost sounded like someone calling his name.

 

Yamase must have heard the sound, too, and without looking in the direction of its source, he grabbed Shion by the wrist and hauled him in the opposite direction.

 

Shion didn’t dare to glance over his shoulder—didn’t want to see the gray-haired, black-clad monstrosity that was no doubt right on their heels. It was faster than this in Chronos. Why hasn’t it caught up to us, yet? His feet pounded against the dirt, expertly dodging bodies sprawled on the ground, ducking out of the way of reaching white hands and biting, tar-slathered mouths.

 

Yamase’s hand on his wrist felt heavy and warm, like a chain. _Chains—that thing had chains around its neck. It was beneath No.6 four years ago—no, don’t think about that now. Run. Focus on running_. Shion’s feet struck the ground as Yamase dashed around one of the alleys; Shion jumped when he did, and the toe of his boot caught the shoulder of a large corpse curled in the shadows.

 

Shion stumbled and went to the ground, taking Yamase down with him. With a bit-back curse, Yamase struck the ground and skinned his knees; he hissed, and Shion landed on hands and knees, clutching the knife, face inches from the serene expression of a freshly-dead corpse not yet transformed.

 

Yamase forced himself to his feet without looking back. He sprinted forward, knife swinging in his grip, and he didn’t look back to see if Shion had forced himself to his feet. Shion found that, in his panic-induced state, he didn’t blame him for running. He forced himself to his feet when Yamase cleared the alley, leaving Shion alone in an alley, right next to a fresh body.

 

He was only half-way up when something grabbed the back of his white uniform, stained in mud and other red liquids he’d rather not think about. Shion stumbled, a wailing moan inches from his ear, and he rolled onto his back and glanced up—face to face with the white face and burning crimson eyes of a Bee.

 

Shion’s body went rigid. He knew him. The Bee hovering above him was young, not much younger than Shion, and the curved angles of his cheekbones seemed exaggerated with the pallor of his face. Crimson, pupil-less eyes bore into his own; Shion saw nothing in their depths, not a reflection or a flash of light, just an expanse of bloodied scarlet.

 

 _No. Not here_. Not like this. Shion swung up, feeling the slick handle of the chef’s knife in his palm. He felt a sick wave of nausea as the blade of the knife buried into the Bee’s thin shoulder. He’d never used a weapon against anything before in his life—he gagged at the feel of the smooth metal biting into flesh, burying into the bones. But the Bee kept coming, deterred by neither pain nor the prospect of second death. Clumps of white hair fell in his face, drips of black drool splattering against Shion’s cheeks, dripping down his nose.

 

Shion threw his arms up, his weapon abandoned, shielding his face. The rock-hard teeth clamped down just out of reach of his hands; he could feel the stench of death filtering in all around him. In the Bee’s opened, black-slathered mouth, Shion could see gaps where he was missing teeth. Not much older than him—teeth had fallen out, and new ones would never return.

 

Shion flinched, waiting for the pain, but it never came. Shion heard the wailing of the siren, heard the low moans of the Bee hovering half an inch out of biting distance; he cracked an eye open to see that the Bee’s progress had been halted.

 

Shion flattened himself against the ground and glanced to his right. The end of a long, metal pole burrowed into the dirt by his head, through the shoulder of the Bee, holding it’s flailing away from Shion. Next to the pole, a pair of heavy black boots stood next to the Bee. He continued to twitch and swipe, edges of his broken fingernails scraping against Shion’s bare arms and cheeks.

 

 _Black boots_ . Shion thought to the black-clad monster rushing through Chronos. _No. No. No. No!_ He scrambled along the ground, pushing himself along his elbows, sliding out from underneath the Bee. If that monstrosity was here, inches away from him, he needed to get away. The Bee could provide a distraction while Shion rolled to the end of the alley and ran and—and—and then _what?_

 

Shion saw the black boots shift, and when he flinched, he saw a pale face hovering above him. His throat went dry. Pale skin, but not gray—and not dressed in black from a No.6 Security Uniform. Shion stared up at him, and the world fell away. Long gray hair hung around a smooth face, drawn back into a high ponytail. Storm cloud eyes bore down to Shion’s face, his expression drawn in fierce concentration. Shion reached a hand up, out of reach of the Bee’s frantic biting, and the boy in black reached down, grasped his hand, and yanked Shion out from underneath him.

 

Shion scrambled forward on hands and knees, and over his shoulder, Nezumi decapitated the Bee with one clean stroke. The white-haired head bounced to the ground; crimson eyes stared ahead, empty and blank, mouth dropped open in a mockery of surprise. Instinctively, Shion reached for his chef’s knife, burrowed in the Bee’s shoulder, but Nezumi’s slender hand reached down and caught his wrist.

 

“Leave it,” he said, loud and clear over the shrieking of the sirens echoing throughout No.6, and his voice was the familiar drum that Shion remembered. His heart swelled. “Shion, get up—we’ve got to leave.”

 

Shion allowed himself to be hauled to his feet. His body quivered, legs wobbling, and he felt the burn of tears in his throat as Nezumi stood in front of him. _Four years_. Had it really been four years since they’d seen each other? Nezumi looked exactly as Shion imagined he would—tall and stick-thin, long hair drawn back over a strikingly beautiful face. Shion’s lips pressed into a thin line and he gasped, in through his nose and out his mouth, the air tasting like smoke and blood.

 

“Nezumi,” Shion whispered, reaching his hands out to grasp at the front of the black leather jacket thrown over his slender shoulders. The fabric crunched beneath his hands; his trembling fingers felt numb, and his whole body burned. “Nezumi, Nezumi, Nezumi—it’s you—you’re really here—you—”

 

Nezumi caught his wrists and held him for a moment; his expression flickered, shifting from fierce concentration to a soft glance that filled Shion with warmth. It disappeared in the blink of an eye, but Shion had already burned it to memory. Nezumi’s hands pried Shion’s off of his jacket and thrust them down at his sides. “No time for that now. Come on, we need to get out of here.”

  
Around him the shrieking of the siren announced Shion’s friends and fellow citizens falling in Chronos. The low moans of Bees in the streets echoed around him. His trembling hands hovered at his side, Nezumi’s hands gripping him tight as chains. The fierce tang of blood stung the air, thick in Shion’s throat. His chest convulsed with each breath—and for a moment, as the world shuddered around him, falling to pieces, Shion allowed himself to revel in the fact that Nezumi was here, with him, and as long as they were standing here with one another, somehow everything would be all right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YAY NEZUMI'S BACK!
> 
> And we were also introduced to our villain: the Security uniform-wearing monster running through Chronos. Shion didn't get much in regards to _what_ this creature actually is, but rest assured that he will be returning in later chapters. If you all recall, we _have_ seen this being, back in the prologue.
> 
> In our next chapter, Shion and Nezumi try to escape No.6 without running into the monster (Nezumi will refer to him by his nickname in the next chapter, so that Shion will know it, but back in the prologue, Nezumi referred to this beast as _The Chained One_ ). And what has happened to Karan, and Safu?
> 
> Will Shion be able to find his mother...or has something _awful_ happened to her? You'll have to find out in the next chapter! Thank you all for joining me! Have an awesome day, guys!


	6. Out of the City

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shion saw Nezumi look at him and shout something—but he couldn't hear him over the sound of the door bursting open and striking the wall, the Bee shambling straight for him, arms outstretched, teeth clacking, crimson eyes wide and filled with inhuman hunger.
> 
> Nezumi stepped to the side and plunged his blade forward, burying it to the hilt in the Bee's shoulder. The strike would have downed a human being twice Nezumi's size; but the Bee was not human, it felt no pain, and with a low moan it lurched toward Nezumi, black-smeared teeth snapping shut.
> 
> The Bee fell, and Nezumi let go of his knife to let it fall—and the Bee's hands, swinging and grasping, caught the gray scarf around his throat and dragged him down. " _Fuck!_ " Nezumi shouted; there was a series of heavy, cracking thumps, and then dead silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello and welcome, my lovelies! Here's to the next update in " _ripped apart_ ", and here's hoping that you will all enjoy this chapter as much as you've enjoyed the last couple of chapters.
> 
> I have the next two days off from work, a rare collection of days that my boss decided that I deserved a break, and so I have decided to use them to spend some time updating my fan fictions.
> 
> In our previous chapter, Nezumi returned! Whoo-hoo! But, there are still Bees wandering around No.6, some monster with chains running around Chronos, and we have no idea where Karan is or what has happened to her. Will she be all right? Has something bad happened to her?
> 
> Thank you for continuing to support this story. Please enjoy this chapter, and with luck, I will have the next chapter up and running shortly!

Nezumi was dressed for a fight, that much Shion could tell. Standing in front of Shion, dressed in a thick black leather jacket with a gray fiber-cloth scarf wrapped around his throat, he looked like one of the bounty hunters employed by the city states. A black holster rested against his thigh, the hilt of a long knife jutting out. There were other weapons strapped around his body—another knife tucked by the waistband of his pants, a gun by his belt, a needle-thin blade taped around his forearm that Shion saw only when Nezumi stretched his arm up and the sleeve of his jacket slipped down.

 

Shion was suddenly reminded of the reoccurring dreams he’d suffered as a child. With his hair pulled back out of his face, dressed in black and carrying enough weapons to be dangerous, Shion remembered the boy in his dreams, the one who’d saved him from the Bees. Maybe that boy  _ had _ been Nezumi—after all, he’d just come out of nowhere and saved Shion from a Bee a moment ago, hadn’t he?

 

In the brilliant sunlight, Nezumi’s hair shimmered like silver. He was looking over his shoulders, body tensed like the string of a bow. “Stop staring,” he said suddenly.

 

Shion blinked. “What?”

 

“You’re staring at me, Knock it off.” Nezumi looked down at the Bee’s corpse lying on the ground by his feet. He made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. Shion didn’t want to look at it, knowing he’d see an empty neck and somewhere closeby, an open-mouthed head that would never move again. “Come on, let’s go.”

 

“ _ Go? _ ” Shion felt a shock of surprise bolt through him. “Go where?”

 

“Anywhere you want, really,” said Nezumi with an inelegant shrug of the shoulders. “Provided it’s not here. We could go to North Block, South Block, West Block—but not East Block, because that place burned down four years ago, and they haven’t quite rebuilt the walls yet, so it’s pretty much  _ exactly _ like No.6 right now.” Nezumi grinned; it was an evil expression.

 

“W—wait, you want to—to leave No.6?” Shion was baffled. “I—I can’t do that!”

 

“Sure you can,” Nezumi replied. “It’s not as hard as your precious Security Bureau makes it out to be. Speaking of the Security Bureau,” Nezumi continued, gesturing to Shion’s filthy white uniform. “Care to explain to me why you’re working for those assholes after what they did to you?”

 

“They didn’t give me a choice, and—” Shion paused. “Hold on. How did you know about what they did to me? Have you been spying on me?”

 

Nezumi snorted, “Please. Like I’d have time for something like that.”

 

“Then how did you—”

 

“You broke the laws and you aren’t dead, so it’s not hard to figure out,” said Nezumi shortly. “Look, we don’t have time for this, all right? In case you hadn’t noticed, this place is crawling with Bees.”

 

“We could go to Chronos, but—” Shion thought of the dark monster ripping through the streets. He didn’t think he or Nezumi could outrun that thing, and there was no telling where in Chronos it could be by now. If it had come from Lost Town, caused this much destruction, and then reached Chronos in an  _ hour _ , Shion doubted it would be difficult for it to circle back.

 

“Yeah, no, I’m not stowing away in No.6 again. Did that once, and while it was a  _ lovely _ experience full of impromptu stitches and hot chocolate, I’m not exactly eager for a repeat.”

 

“Then where—”

 

Something came from behind him: a sharp, sudden thud, followed by a low moan. Shion started to look over his shoulder, but Nezumi caught him by the shoulder and steered him in the opposite direction. “And that’s our cue to leave. Come on, Your Majesty, let’s move.”

 

_ Your Majesty? _ Shion didn’t understand the nickname, but he didn’t think  _ now _ was the best time to question it. He bustled along at Nezumi’s heels, keeping his eyes firmly locked on his back. Nezumi moved them out of the alley and into the streets.

 

The end of summer air had gotten even hotter, and running through the streets felt like swimming as fast as he could through boiling water. At the end of the street, Nezumi turned in the opposite direction of Shion’s street, away from Karan’s bakery. Shion’s stomach sank. Nezumi was intent on bringing him away from No.6, but he couldn’t leave, not without Karan.

 

The streets were filled with unmoving Bee corpses, and so Shion felt secure enough to dig his heels in the dirt and attempt to pry his wrist away from Nezumi’s grip. “Nezumi—Nezumi, hold on a second!” He was much stronger than Shion remembered; it shouldn’t have surprised him, considering how easy it had been for Nezumi to sweep him off his feet four years ago.

 

“Shut up, we have to get out of here before—” Nezumi struggled to keep his grasp on Shion. “Dammit, Shion, stop it— _ what _ are you doing?”

 

“My  _ mom! _ ” Shion struggled in his grip. “Nezumi, let me go! I have to get my mom!”

 

“We don’t have time for that,” Nezumi insisted. “Your mom’s probably already been—”

 

Rage bolted through Shion’s body like an electric wave. Without even thinking of it, he struck out at Nezumi’s pale face, raking with his nails. He managed to swipe Nezumi across the cheek; he jerked back in surprise. It wasn’t much of a distraction, but enough for Shion to yank his wrist back. Turning away from Nezumi, feeling him grasp again for his wrist, he bolted down the dirt road.

 

**~ * ~ * ~ * ~**

 

The second-floor windows were dark, the usual sign that his mother was busy in the bakery. But the windows to the shop were pitch black, too, and that in itself was not normal. Calm down, don’t panic. Shion’s stomach tightened the moment he stopped in front of the doors.

 

For a place ravished by Bees, Lost Town was abnormally quiet. Perhaps the sounds of screaming from Chronos had lured the others away; Bees were attracted to sounds. Shion pressed his hand to the door handle, taking in a deep breath—and felt something clamp down on his shoulder, twisting him around.

 

“Next time you run off like that,” Nezumi snarled under his breath, “I’m going to leave you behind.”

 

“Nezumi?” Shion blinked. His heart swelled at the knowledge that Nezumi had come after him. He could have easily deemed him a lost cause, a burden, and left him to perish.

 

“Christ,” muttered Nezumi, letting Shion’s wrist drop. “Why the fuck do I get myself into these messes? This your mom’s place?”

 

Shion nodded. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He reached for the handle again, and only then did he see the scratches in the wood. How had he missed those? They looked like claw marks, long and parallel, raked deeply into the wood. He sucked in a shuddering breath.  _ Claws. That chained thing had claws _ .

 

Nezumi put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll go first.” Shion wanted to tell him that he could do it, that he wasn’t afraid, but the words wouldn’t come. He could taste the terror he'd felt when he'd first heard the siren blaring through No.6. Now that he thought of it, he could still hear it, but it had faded into the background. The realization that he and Nezumi were together again, the happiness and the concern for his mother blended together into a silencing force that left Shion breathless.

 

Nezumi pushed the door open with one hand, the other creeping to the hilt of the knife at his side. Once inside the entry way, Shion blinked. The lights in the bakery were not on; in the dimness, he could see shattered glass, glittering like crystals, across the hardwood floor. His stomach sank.

 

Nezumi stepped slowly into the room, running his hand along the top of the counters. His fingers came away wet, streaked in black tar and crimson dirt. "Blood," he said with a frown.

 

"M—maybe it belongs to someone else." Shion's voice sounded distant. "Maybe it's not my mom's."

 

"Maybe," Nezumi agreed, though he didn't sound so sure. "Stay close."

 

He headed for the stairwell leading to the living quarter portion of Karan's bakery. The foyer was dark, and Shion stumbled across the blood-smeared glass and the discarded pastries in his attempt to keep up with Nezumi. His heart hammered in his chest. He didn't want to believe that the blood could belong to Karan, didn't want to think that, once they went upstairs, she could fall on top of them, white-haired and red-eyed, teeth snapping.

 

The door to the living room was ajar; Shion's heart stopped. Karan never left it open during business hours. He took a step forward—and Nezumi held his arm out, stopping him in his tracks. "Stay behind me," he said. He drew the knife from his thigh holster and held it aloft.

 

Shion's fingers trembled. He stood close to Nezumi, hovering over his shoulder. He shivered; inside Karan's apartment, the air was crisp and cool in spite of the heat filtering in through the opened windows. He felt goosebumps rising as Nezumi walked slowly through the doorway and into the small hall leading to the living room.

 

The walls were bare, the paintings and pictures Shion had painted with his fingers as a child knocked to the floor. The curtains were torn from the windows; glass shimmered on the couch, torn leather splattered with crimson. Nezumi's arm kept Shion from falling forward; and when he glanced down, his breath caught.

 

There were Bees. Four of them, in the middle of the floor. Shion's hands went to his mouth; Nezumi raised the knife in defense—and stopped. His eyebrows shot up in surprise, and lowering the knife, he said, "They're _dead_."

 

For a moment, Shion wanted to reply, _Of course they're dead. They're Bees_. But upon closer inspection, he saw what Nezumi meant. Like the one he'd decapitated, and like the others littering the streets, the four lying sprawled in the middle of Karan's living room were immobile. Gaping red holes marked the backs of their necks. Shion lowered his hands from his mouth, voice trembling as he asked, "W—what do you think—happened to them?"

 

"Somebody killed them," said Nezumi, matter-of-factually. He kept his knife clutched tight in his hand, sweeping a gaze through the living room. "None of these are your mom, are they?"

 

"I—," Shion began, scanning the four bodies on the ground. Four men he recognized from Lost Town, regular customers who came into the bakery almost every day. Shion could not remember their names, but he'd seen them. "N—no, they're not—my mom's not here."

 

As if in a dream, Shion gestured through the living room to the small kitchen. Nezumi shuffled forward, and Shion clung close to him. The kitchen was empty of bodies, but full of scarlet blood. The chairs, table, refrigerator, and even the open cabinets, all of them were splattered with thick, black-tinted blood. Shion's voice was soft as he whispered, "I don't think my mom's here."

 

"Don't relax just yet," Nezumi muttered. His pale silver eyes darted around the kitchen. "She could be in one of the bedrooms."

 

Shion glanced around one last time. The kitchen drawer was open, he noticed, and all the knives—the paring blade, the chef's knife, all the steak knives, and the cleaver Karan had spent a little extra on when they lived in Chronos—were missing. His stomach dropped. Had Karan taken them, or had someone come and raided the house?

 

The light in the hallway was out, but Shion had been in Karan's apartment enough to navigate his way around. With Nezumi in front of him, he pointed out the door to Karan's bedroom, which was held slightly ajar. Something made a sound inside. Nezumi's back went straight and Shion, panicked and hopeful and terrified, craned his neck to see over Nezumi's shoulder. Through the thin strip of the door, he could see a dark shape moving around, grunting and rumbling. He opened his mouth to call out to his mother, to tell her it was OK now and he was here and both of them were safe—

 

And then Nezumi ripped the door open, raising the knife—and a Bee collapsed out into the hallway with a low, guttural moan.

 

Shion staggered backward with a loud shriek. His back struck the wall; he sunk to his knees, breath knocked from his lungs. There was a dull thrumming in his ears as he sat upright, gawking in terror at the spectacle before him.

 

Nezumi grasped the Bee's wrist and, with a grunt of effort, sent it crashing to the ground. It was a small person—half a head shorter than Shion and a good few inches shorter than Nezumi, but with its frantic movements, it was difficult to make out its facial features, the length of its hair, its clothes, anything that could have reassured Shion that it was not his mother.

 

The blade in Nezumi's hand was like a shock of moonlight; he struck out at the Bee, who stumbled back with a loud moan, hands reaching and clawing for Nezumi's face, his hair, his sleeves, anything it could latch onto to pull him within biting distance.

 

In the bedroom, there was nothing else. Shion hauled himself to his feet. His mother wasn't there. "Nezumi—," Shion bellowed, hands grasping for something, anything, he could use as a weapon to fight back.

 

Nezumi turned to him. He raced forward. " _Move!_ " He grasped Shion's wrist and shoved him toward the door; Shion stumbled and used the wall, slick with blood, to navigate his way to the open entryway. Nezumi shoved him out into the stairwell and whirled around to slam the door shut, to cut off the Bee's advance—and then the Bee stumbled out into the stairwell, too, teeth snapping opened and closed.

 

 

Shion saw Nezumi look at him and shout something—but he couldn't hear him over the sound of the door bursting open and striking the wall, the Bee shambling straight for him, arms outstretched, teeth clacking, crimson eyes wide and filled with inhuman hunger.

Nezumi stepped to the side and plunged his blade forward, burying it to the hilt in the Bee's shoulder. The strike would have downed a human being twice Nezumi's size; but the Bee was not human, it felt no pain, and with a low moan it lurched toward Nezumi, black-smeared teeth snapping shut.

The Bee fell, and Nezumi let go of his knife to let it fall—and the Bee's hands, swinging and grasping, caught the gray scarf around his throat and dragged him down. " _ Fuck! _ " Nezumi shouted; there was a series of heavy, cracking thumps, and then dead silence.

" _ Nezumi! _ " Shion scrambled to his feet and hurried to the edge of the stairs. Nezumi lay sprawled at the foot of the steps, his arms spread out on either side of him like the points of a star. Across his legs lay the Bee, the hilt of the knife protruding from its shoulder. It didn't move; blood leaked from its mouth, mixing in with the unnatural blackness of the saliva between its teeth.

 

Shion hurried down the stairs, watching the Bee for any signs of movement. He could see its face: dead-white, empty, latticed with spatters of blood from its fall down the hard steps of the bakery. Its eyes were vacant and crimson. Fighting the urge to gag, Shion stumbled down the last few steps, stepping over the Bee's still body, and dropped to his knees beside Nezumi.

 

He drew in a hiss through his teeth; Shion's heart pounded, first with relief and then with terror. Nezumi was alive, but that could change in a moment if his spine or his head had been injured. "Nezumi—," he began, running his hands over Nezumi's chest, feeling his shirt sticky with blood. He pressed, feeling for wounds, knowing that he had some thread in his old bedroom he could find if he needed to perform another series of suture-work. "Nezumi, are you all right?"

 

Nezumi propped himself up on his elbows and glanced down at the Bee. "Is it dead?"

 

"I—I—I think so...?"

 

"Then I'm good." Nezumi winced, bringing a hand to his forehead. "Shit. Going to feel that in the morning. Help me up."

 

Crawling around to his head, Shion slipped his hands under his armpits and pulled. Shion wasn't strong by any means—his hands slipped, and Nezumi grunted with pain as his legs slipped out from under the Bee's corpse. Shion shuffled back when Nezumi was free; he rose to his feet with a groan. "Are—are you all right?" asked Shion, pressing the palms of his hands to Nezumi's hip.

 

Nezumi swatted his hands away. "Yes,  _ Mom _ . I'm fine." He glanced up the stairs, brow furrowed. "Speaking of moms, it doesn't look like yours is there. Any idea where else she could have gone?"

 

"No." Shion pressed his lips together in a thin line. He looked down at the Bee's corpse, sprawled at the foot of the steps. Now that he wasn't be chased by it, he noticed the details in its face, the familiar-looking uniform. Its blood-stained hair fell across its face, cut in a peculiar fashion. "Nezumi, are you sure it's—"

 

Nezumi put his foot on the Bee's shoulder, grasped the hilt of his knife, and gave a hard yank. The blade slipped free with a wet, sickening  _ pop _ ; Shion's stomach rolled. Nezumi glanced at the Bee, over to Shion, and nodded once. "Don't look," he ordered, and Shion nodded. He turned away as Nezumi plunged the blade down. Shion heard it slide into the thing's flesh with a slick noise.

 

He waited until Nezumi wandered back into his line of sight. "Did you decapitate it, like the other one?" He wanted to look over and see, but he couldn't bring himself to look at the carnage again, to see a headless corpse of a flesh-devouring monster and know that, only two hours ago, it had been a human being, running for his life as he now was.

 

"Tch—with a blade this small? Don't be ridiculous." Nezumi wiped off the blade on the back of his pants, leaving a smear of scarlet against the khaki material. He slid the knife into the holster strapped to his thigh. "I just pierced the base of its skull. Head injuries like that usually kill it. The stairs probably did it in—it hit its head a few times, but better safe than dead."

 

The air in the bakery was full of the smell of blood: heavy and metallic. Nezumi made a sound in the back of his throat. His face was drained of color; then again, Nezumi had always been on the pale side, or so Shion remembered from the two times he'd interacted with him. He gestured vaguely to the steps. "There's tons of Bees up there. None of them were your mother, were they?"

 

"N—no, I don't think so." Shion didn't want to think that any of the corpses up in the hallway could belong to his mother. He hadn't gotten much of a good look at them, but he knew, instinctively, that no matter what, human or inhuman, he would recognize his mother immediately.

 

"Well somebody was already up there," said Nezumi. "Those other Bees—the ones near the doorway—they all had holes in the napes of their necks. Didn't you see? Someone did away with them—except for our little friend, here." He gave the Bee's corpse on the ground a nudge with the toe of his heavy black boot. "Think this guy could be the one who killed the others?"

 

"Do Bees go after each other?" asked Shion.

 

"Of course not. The dead don't go after the dead. But he could have been alive at first, gotten bit in a scuffle, and transformed sometime after." Nezumi spat on the ground, a glob of saliva mixed with the familiar pink tint of blood.

 

"Nezumi, you're—" Shion gasped.

 

"Relax, Your Majesty. I just bit my tongue in the fall." He winced. "Yup.  _ Definitely _ gonna feel that tomorrow."

 

"Maybe my mom's hiding," Shion suggested. He started up the stairs.

 

"Don't bother," Nezumi answered. "If she  _ was _ hiding, she would have come out when she heard you. It's been too quiet. Face it, Shion, your mother's not here." He folded his arms across his chest, and looked to the window. "We're sitting ducks in here. We need to leave."

 

"But what about my mom?" Shion couldn't just leave her behind. If she was here somewhere, he needed to find her.  _ Mom, Mom, where are you? You're not a Bee, right? You're still you, aren't you, Mom? _ He turned and looked up at the empty staircase. In the living room, there were four Bee corpses, all with bleeding throats and broken heads. Karan was not among them. She had to be somewhere in Lost Town.

 

"I hate to break it to you, Your Majesty, but we're not exactly in the best position to be looking for your mother. Lost Town is crawling with Bees, and if we don't get out of here soon, we're going to end up  _ joining _ them." Nezumi's expression darkened. "And I'm not planning on becoming one anytime soon."

 

Shion felt an argument forming in his throat. He couldn't just up and abandon his mother or Safu. He needed to make sure they were all right. He was about to say so to Nezumi, to inform him that he would not be leaving Lost Town until he knew his mother was safe and sound—and then a loud  _ crack _ came from outside. Shion heard a wailing bellow echo down the streets, and suddenly, in the waking silence, he realized that the siren had stopped.

 

Nezumi's spine went rigid.

 

Shion stared over his shoulder, through the glass. "What was—"

 

" _ Run _ ," said Nezumi, and suddenly Shion felt a hand around his wrist, and then he and Nezumi were sprinting outside. The door slammed behind them with a loud  _ bang _ ; Nezumi cursed under his breath, head whipping from side to side, from one end of the street to the other, glancing around with wild-eyed terror. "Where is it?" he muttered, silver eyes dark and lips drawn back in a scowl. "Where is it, where is it?"

 

"Where's  _ what _ , Nezumi?" Shion's body tingled with electricity. Nezumi, who had been calm under pressure, suddenly looked as terrified as the men and women in Chronos, and his panic left Shion feeling hollow and weak. "What was that sound—"

 

The wail came from somewhere to their right. It sounded otherworldly, rumbling through Lost Town. Shion whipped his head to the side—and then Nezumi was running down the street away from the sound, dragging Shion along behind him.

 

Nezumi moved faster than Shion, and he felt that, if he were to trip, Nezumi would either drop him or drag him. Yamase had already moved on without him when he'd fallen in the alley; if he were to fall now, he feared Nezumi would abandon him, too.  _ Don't think like that. Just run _ . He struggled to keep upright as Nezumi sprinted down the street, not looking over his shoulder, not making a sound, just darting around the sprawled corpses of dispatched Bees and useless bodies in the dirt. Shion heard something behind him, a noise somewhere over his shoulder, and knowing it was dumb—knowing it could make him fall to the ground—he looked.

 

Nezumi didn’t see it, but Shion did: looming at the end of the street like a monster in a fairy tale. Stick-thin and clad from neck to toe in the inky blackness of a Security uniform, chained wrists hanging limp at its sides, gray face framed by pulled back silver-blue hair. Two black bullet holes gazed out at Nezumi and Shion; even from this distance, Shion could see its face, twisted in a vicious, ravenous sneer.

 

The monster from Chronos.

 

The chained thing.

 

And it had  _ spotted them _ .

 

Shion screamed without meaning to; terror exploded from him in a single, sustained sound, echoing through the streets like the call of the warning siren. The chained monster’s head snapped upright, and its clawed hands stretched out, reaching, and all at once, in a sudden display of speed, it darted down the street in quick pursuit.

 

“ _ Nezumi! _ ” Shion shrieked, urging himself to move faster as the rattling of chains grew closer and closer, the black-clad monster closing the distance between them without effort. “Nezumi, Nezumi,  _ Nezumi _ —”

 

“Shut up and  _ fucking run! _ ” Nezumi bellowed over his shoulder.

 

He could hear the thing behind them, following: its footsteps landed like echoing gunshots against the dirt, but it moved quickly—faster than Shion, or Nezumi, could  _ ever _ hope to move.  _ It’s going to get us—it’s going to get us—it’s going to _ —

 

And then all at once the noise ended. Nezumi whipped around the corner, dragging Shion with him, and as he turned, Shion glanced to the side for one last look, to see how far away the thing was; he saw the black-clad beast, surrounded on three sides by other black-clad bodies, peach-skinned and alive, each of them holding a chain taut in their hands.

 

_ Security officials? What are they doing?  _ Shion didn’t have much time to wonder; as he watched the monster thrash in the hold, unable to latch onto any one Security officer with each strand of chains held aloft, Nezumi continued to drag him away.

 

Behind him, he heard a loud crack.  _ I don’t want to look _ , he thought, and yet his head seemed to turn against his will and glance at the sight over his shoulder. In the middle of the filthy street, littered with bodies, Rashi stood with his back to the thrashing chained-up monster, his face twisted into a furious snarl.  He looked like a ruined dream—and his blazing eyes were locked directly on Shion’s back.

“Where are you going,  Shion? _ ” _  Rashi's voice lanced through him like a blade; his legs faltered for only a moment, and Shion nearly went sprawling in the dirt.

 

He kept running after Nezumi. They were approaching the massive stone wall that had surrounded the entirety of No.6’s borders since the moment Shion had been born. He looked around, finally realizing just what Nezumi had been leading him to: hidden well beneath the wilted shrubs in the distance, the entrance to a small path, too small for the chained up monster to navigate its way through. It’d been how Nezumi had gotten into No.6 four years ago—and now it would be used as a tool to aid in their escape.

 

Nezumi disappeared into the entrance of the small hole, and Shion dropped down, sliding across the dirt on his hip. The momentum he had built up as he’d been running aided in his ability to tuck and slip right into the stone tunnel.

 

How had no one ever noticed it was here? How had no Bee ever been able to navigate their way into No.6 through this gaping breach in security? And more importantly, how had the Security Bureau let such a grievous failure in protection go unnoticed?

 

Ahead of him, Nezumi wriggled his way through the stone cavern, and Shion felt the stones pressing in around his shoulders. It was difficult to push forward; he got stuck for a moment, but, ignoring his instinct to panic, he drew in a deep breath, hunched his shoulders forward, and slipped ahead. Nezumi made an impressed sound from up ahead. He hadn't been expecting Shion to figure out how to move on his own.

 

The stone walls were slick with moss and moisture; spiderwebs clung to Shion's hands as he passed. He scraped his way through the tunnel, right on Nezumi's heels. The tunnel was much smaller than Shion could comprehend; he needed a decent amount of concentration to know how to twist his body when he got stuck, how to step to avoid getting his boot caught between two sections of tight-fitting rock. No wonder no Bees were capable of getting inside; without the ability to focus or think, a Bee would become stuck quite easily.

 

After a few moments, the tunnel angled upward. Shion drew in a sharp breath; he was having trouble breathing. The thick walls of the impervious city crushed in around him; he whimpered, feeling the telltale signs of panic creeping up his spine. His lungs throbbed. He reached his hands up, grasping the sides of the wall. He'd never had to use much of his upper arm strength. Choking out a sob, he tried to pull himself up after Nezumi—felt his hands slip, and made a frightened noise in the back of his throat.

 

Nezumi's hand stuck down in front of his face. Shion latched onto him, clinging as if Nezumi were a lifeline. He heard Nezumi give a fierce grunt, and he was yanked up and out of the tunnel; his hips got stuck once, but Nezumi jerked him up painfully. His thighs scraped along the stones. He bit back a cry. He breached the stone wall with a gasp, filling his lungs with air. It reeked of death and decay, of smoke and blood, but it was better than the disgusting crush of air deep inside the tunnel.

 

"My apologies for the harsh conditions, Your Highness," said Nezumi, raising his voice with a posh accent Shion had only ever heard from some of the higher Elite members of Chronos.

 

Taking in another bout of deep breaths, Shion looked around. The ground was a good six feet below where he and Nezumi sat perched on a broken slab of wall jutting out like a shelf. No Bee would be able to climb it, lacking the motor skills to haul themselves up. All around, large-trunked trees filled with dark green leaves stretched out before him. No paths. No fences. Nothing but open land.

 

Six meters to the right, a Bee woman in a shredded white and pink polka-dotted dress knocked her head against the wall. She made a low groaning sound in the back of her throat. Shion grasped for Nezumi's hand, pointing with his other hand, stammering out a horrified noise—but Nezumi chuckled and shook his head. "That's just Ira. She's not all that fast; we've got nothing to worry about."

 

"Did you—did you name her that?" Shion asked, his breath coming out in harsh puffs.

 

Nezumi snorted. "Of course not. She used to live in East Block four years ago. She got bitten when the Chained One attacked." He reached up and grasped his shoulder, the one Shion had stitched in his bedroom four years ago, and made a pained face.

 

Shion placed a hand on top of his, brow furrowed in concern. "Nezumi, are you all right? Your shoulder—"

 

"Forget about it. Just an old injury," Nezumi mumbled. "Come on, let's get moving." He hopped down from the ledge without a sound. Holding up his hands, he gestured for Shion to jump down. Shion glanced down, feeling his body tense, and Nezumi clicked his tongue quietly. "I'll catch you, Your Majesty—just come on before something faster than Ira shows up."

 

Shion looked over at the Bee woman; she hadn't turned to look at them, despite the fact that their talking should have alerted her to their presence. He sat on the ledge; he took a deep breath, tasting the rotten air of the world beyond the wall, and dropped down.

 

Nezumi caught him in his arms without difficulty; he swung Shion around once, setting him on the grass quietly. Shion let out a quiet breath. Nezumi chuckled, holding onto him for a moment, and when he let go, Shion saw the Bee woman turning to look at them. He sucked in a deep breath. "And that's our cue," said Nezumi. He gestured toward the thick copse of trees. "Let's move."

 

And without looking back at Ira, who had begun shambling away from the wall toward them, Shion grasped onto Nezumi's wrist, holding onto him for support, and followed him into the forests surrounding the city filled with white-haired corpses and a shrieking, chained monster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nezumi managed to get Shion out of No.6! But they were chased away by the Chained One, and we still don't know where Karan has gone off to. And what about Safu? Did she manage to make it to one of the safe areas in Chronos? What horrors await us in future chapters?
> 
> I would like to extend a big thank-you to everyone who has liked and followed and commented on this story. I had been planning this story for a long time, and I have to say that I am over the moon that it has finally become a reality.
> 
> There will be three parts to this series: _ripped apart_ , _stitched together_ , and _torn asunder_. I am uncertain as to how many chapters will be in each of these stories, though I suspect that all of them will be roughly this same length.
> 
> I hope to see all of you again in the next chapter! Shion and Nezumi wander through the forests, finally free of No.6, and from here, their adventures can begin!


	7. On the Road to West Block

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nezumi came to a halt, so suddenly Shion crashed into him. His chin bounced against Nezumi's shoulder; he gasped. Nezumi whirled like a black and silver blur, hand coming up and clapping over Shion's mouth. "Shut up," he hissed. "Move!" He seized Shion's upper arm and dragged him under the cover of a thick arrangement of low-branched trees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good evening, people! Thank you all once again for joining me for this new chapter of " _ripped apart_ ". It is my pleasure to welcome you all to a bit more of an explanation of the world of Bees and the chained monster under the control of No.6 and the Security Bureau.
> 
> I plan to have the next update out soon. In the next chapter, Shion and Nezumi will finally arrive in West Block. In order for the story to progress a bit farther, there are a few familiar characters they need to interact with. Any guesses as to who those two might be?
> 
> Thank you all so much for supporting me through this series. It has been a lot of fun to write, although there are chapters in the next two parts of this series that I am looking forward to writing.
> 
> Please enjoy, all!

**** Shion was  _ not _ dressed for travel. When he woke up that morning, he had not been anticipating leaving No.6. And yet here he was, following after Nezumi, into the thick copse of trees that stank of rot and stretched each way Shion looked—each way except behind him. If he turned around, he knew he would see the imposing walls of No.6. Knowing what lied beyond the stones, remembering the piercing shriek of the chained monster that had chased them straight out of Lost Town, Shion knew he was better off not looking back.

 

Nezumi, however, was dressed for the harsh trek through the forest. He wore his long hair pulled away from his face; a few strands clung to his neck. He was covered from head to toe in thick leather, a pair of heavy boots moving silently across the grass, missing the fallen branches. The hood of the fiber cloth cloak bounced between his shoulder blades, intended to be yanked up to hide his face in a second—from the harsh rays of the mid-afternoon sun and from prying eyes, Shion imagined.

 

Shion was surprised by how little the scent of rotten flesh and bloodied air disturbed him. Nezumi glanced over his shoulder repeatedly, as if he were expecting Shion to crumple to his knees and empty the contents of his stomach. He wouldn't. Nezumi was risked everything to get him safely out of No.6—but was he  _ really _ safe out here, surrounded by Bees?

 

Ira had followed them for the better part of a mile, but Nezumi and Shion moved faster than her, and soon enough Shion could no longer hear her limp footsteps cracking over the broken branches or shuffling through the tall grass.

 

Nezumi didn't seem too worried about running into any Bees; although, to be fair, Shion had not seen any Bees other than Ira since leaving No.6. Rather than comfort him, it just made him paranoid. Just because he couldn't see any Bees did not mean there weren't some lurking about. He clutched Nezumi's wrist, trembling. Nezumi felt it and chuckled, low in his throat.

 

"Relax, Your Highness," he said quietly. Shion had to strain to hear him. "The sounds from No.6 lured most of them away."

 

"But they'll come back, won't they?" Shion whispered.

 

"It won't matter if we hurry."

 

Shion glanced over his shoulder, finally; he could no longer see the expanse of No.6. He felt his heart clench. He had  _ no idea _ where he was. He was relying solely on Nezumi to lead him to safety and, if he allowed himself to be honest, Nezumi  _ was _ a stranger.

 

Nezumi pressed his fingertips to the trunk of an especially large tree, tracing a pattern carved deep in the jagged wood. He nodded and skirted around the tree, gesturing for Shion to follow. Hurrying to catch up, Shion caught sight of a large groove scratched in the trunk, designed to look like a backwards  _ B _ . Bounty hunter, most likely. "What's this mark for?"

 

"Keep up," Nezumi said over his shoulder.

 

Shion stumbled over a branch. His boot made a loud crunching sound when it landed; he tensed, but Nezumi didn't seem worried, so Shion relaxed his shoulders and went to Nezumi's right. As Nezumi moved, Shion noticed the silver glinting of the pistol strapped to a worn black-leather holster. Shion's mouth went dry. He'd never held a gun. The hunting club in Chronos had been permitted to wield guns, and the Security Officials were required. Shion never had use of one—seeing one at Nezumi's side, it sent static bolts of terror through him.

 

"Never held a gun before, Your Majesty?" asked Nezumi.

 

"N—no, of course not," Shion muttered.

 

"Too bad."

 

The last thing Shion had noticed strapped to Nezumi's side was the long knife he'd used against the Bee in Karan's bakery. Shion stared at the obsidian hilt. He'd seen Nezumi reach for it and remove it from the holster in a matter of seconds. Different from Shion's kitchen knives. He remembered the slick feel of the chef's blade slipping into the bones in a shoulder bone; he shivered.

 

"You're staring at me again," Nezumi remarked from over his shoulder.

 

"Your knife—," Shion began, but he wasn't entirely certain where he intended to go from that point. He'd never had a need for a hunting blade, either. And as far as Shion had seen, knives were not useful when fighting against Bees. Swords and guns—anything that could cause damage to a skull or a spinal cord—those were better suited to taking the walking dead down for good.

 

Then again, Nezumi was pretty good with a knife. Shion hadn't seen what Nezumi had used to decapitate the Bee that had collapsed on top of him. A sword, most likely, though Shion could not imagine why he would abandon such a useful weapon.  _ It couldn't have been the knife—the blade's too small _ .

 

Strategically, Shion understood the purpose of using blades as opposed to guns. Noise attracted a Bee's attention, he'd read, and knives and swords made no sound. However, it meant having to get closer to the Bee, and Shion would have never dreamed to getting more than a hundred feet from one of the living dead.

 

But, not an hour ago, one had been inches from his nose, black-slathered teeth clacking away. His flesh tingled. He'd been an inch from death. If Nezumi hadn't shown up when he did—if he'd been even half a second too late—

 

Nezumi came to a halt, so suddenly Shion crashed into him. His chin bounced against Nezumi's shoulder; he gasped. Nezumi whirled like a black and silver blur, hand coming up and clapping over Shion's mouth. "Shut up," he hissed. "Move!" He seized Shion's upper arm and dragged him under the cover of a thick arrangement of low-branched trees.

 

Shion looked over his shoulder, peering through the collection of branches, until finally—there, stumbling through the forest—he could make out the shape of three Bees. The one in front rose half a head taller than Nezumi. The two flanking it, staggering and tripping, were patched together pieces of flesh with chunks missing from their arms and torsos. Shion's stomach churned; the leader of the three swung his head around, groaning low in the back of his throat, and continued on.

 

He turned to whisper to Nezumi, wondering how he'd managed to see them when Shion hadn't heard any sign of them, but Nezumi made an abortive gesture with his hand and gestured forward. He dropped into a low crouch and shuffled along the ground; Shion followed his example, stiffly sliding along, sharp pains shooting through his spine.

 

Shion looked back. Behind them, he could see the white shapeless blobs that had once been Bees. Retreating in the direction of No.6, Shion wondered if it was possible that Bees could hear things Shion could not. He couldn't hear sirens, or screams, or the heart-churning shrieks of the chained abomination in a Security Official uniform. Nezumi hurried through the giant trees; Shion couldn't see five feet in front of him between the large stretch of autumn branches.

 

He glanced up at the tree branches. Strange birds called out from above, piercing chirps sending shivers down his spine. Nezumi moved slowly along the forest floor, a few steps at a time, occasionally glancing back to see if Shion was still following. Shion took a deep breath, hands trembling. The sounds of the Bees stumbling away faded into the background; he could only hear the harsh sounds of his breathing, the calls of birds nestled high in the leaves.

 

When the Bees were far behind them, Nezumi pressed up against the fat trunk of a tree and turned to regard Shion. His expression was strange; he looked as if he hadn't been expecting Shion to keep up with him, let alone make it through the forest without a sound. Shion stopped in front of him, trying to catch his breath. The ground sagged under his ruined boots. Like everything else in No.6— _ And me, too, I suppose _ , Shion thought with a bitter frown—his boots were not meant for survival beyond the safety of the walls. Thick moss crept beneath his fingers.

 

He stood and stepped next to Nezumi. "I—," he began, and then covered his mouth, just in case. He looked to Nezumi, and when Nezumi gave an affirmative nod, Shion said, "I didn't hear them coming—how did you—?"

 

"Lesson number one," Nezumi said, "never let your guard down."

 

"But that doesn't—"

 

"You get a feel for it."

 

Shion glanced over his shoulder again; he couldn't see the Bees, couldn't hear them shambling away, but he kept his voice down, just in case. "Do they always travel in packs like that, or is that rare? You said the dead don't go after the dead, right? Can they communicate with each other, or are they—"

 

"Jesus, you're chatty," Nezumi muttered, shaking his head. "Forgot all about that."

 

"Huh?"

 

"Nothing," he replied, then glanced over Shion's shoulder. "Come on." Without another sound or a glance to see if Shion intended to follow, Nezumi hurried back into the forest, and after glancing over his own shoulder and seeing nothing but a vast expanse of emerald greens and browns, he hurried along.

 

**~ * ~ * ~ * ~**

 

Shion could make out the distinct shape of a dirt road somewhere off to the left. Nezumi never moved toward it. If anything he went out of his way to avoid it. Twice more, he seized Shion by the forearm and jerked him into the cover of trees, skirting out of the sight of Bees. The collection of three had been a rarity, it seemed—Shion never saw more than one any of the other times Nezumi moved him out of the way.

 

After the second time, Shion grasped Nezumi's sleeve and yanked him back. Nezumi shot him a questioning, irritated glance, and Shion whispered, "You're not going to kill any of them?"

 

Nezumi gently removed Shion's fingers from his sleeve. He shook his head. "No point in slaughtering them without reason. If they aren't coming after me, I've got no problem with them. And besides," Nezumi jerked his head in the direction of the road, "you don't want to attract the attention of whatever idiot's traveling on that road."

 

"And we're not taking the road  _ because _ ...?" Shion pressed the tips of his fingers against his right thigh; his muscles were sore, unaccustomed to such extensive exercise. He and Nezumi had been traveling for the better part of three hours. He couldn't imagine how far they'd traveled from No.6.  _ How many miles? Two? Three? A hundred? _ Shion shook his head. He was being ridiculous. They couldn't possibly have traveled  _ that _ far in such a short time.

 

"Trust me, Your Highness," Nezumi replied, and his darkened expression made Shion pause, "you  _ don't  _ want to run into anybody on that road."

 

Shion pressed his lips into a thin line.

 

Nezumi suddenly made a sharp right turn and began climbing up a small slope nestled in deep behind the branches. Shion stood in the middle of the forest and listened to the sounds of birds cackling in treetops, trying to strain his ears for any signs of Bees approaching. His hearing was nowhere near as good as Nezumi’s; after ten seconds of absolute nothing, he breathed out, steeled his nerves, and started up the hill.

 

At the top of the slope, the trees veered off and a narrower road than the one Shion had glimpsed through the tree branches stretched into the distance. Nezumi kept to the side of the road, primarily protected from plain sight by the cover of leaves. Shion tripped along at his back, glancing around.

 

Unlike the forests below, the narrow road led Nezumi and Shion straight into a copse of steeper hills and valleys shaded by massive oak trees peppered with golds and oranges in between the emerald expanses. At the curve of the road, he spotted a small cottage with a run-down thatched roof and a metal chain-link fence around the yard. The grass in the yard was twisted and overgrown; standing in front of the destroyed wooden porch were two dark figures.

 

Nezumi brought his arm out and stopped Shion in his tracks. He gestured to the trees, and together the two of them slid silently into the shade. Nezumi peered ahead, eyes searching for any sudden movements—proof that the figures in the fence were human rather than Bees.

 

"Not bounty hunters," Nezumi said after a moment. His shoulders seemed to relax.

 

"Bees, then?" asked Shion.

 

"Yup."

 

"Shouldn't, ah...Shouldn't we be concerned about them?"

 

"No point." Nezumi gestured, and when Shion glanced over him and down to the cottage, he focused on the fence wrapping the length of the overgrown property. "Bees aren't coordinated enough to figure out how to climb a fence. Just walk by without making a sound, and you'll be good."

 

"OK," Shion muttered. He looked back at the expanse of overgrowth, at the two figures—the two _Bees_ —standing in the middle of it all. From this distance, it was difficult to make out their exact heights and weights, the details in their faces or the exact way their stiff limbs moved when they stumbled. He drew in a deep breath, through his nose so it wouldn't make a sound.

 

The Bees—both of them had been _people_. It could have been days, weeks, months, or even years ago, but at one point, they'd been as alive as Shion and Nezumi. He glanced at the silver knife strapped to Nezumi's side. _It can't be better to be...living like that. Are Bees even living? There's—there's traces of life inside of them, thoughts and actions that move them forward, inbred necessities, but_... Shion's heart hammered in his ears, drowning out the low cries of birds and the rustle of leaves.

 

"You're thinking too much," Nezumi muttered.

 

Shion raised an eyebrow. "I—I'm sorry?"

 

"This cannot be the first time you've seen a dead body."

 

Shion bit his lower lip. He'd seen other Bees, certainly—excluding the ones wandering around Lost Town and the few he and Nezumi had dodged in the forest, he'd seen pictures in the database. However, pictures could not compare to the actual thing. And in regards to those who perished and had not become Bees, Shion had never seen one. He understood, objectively, that people died—and to be honest, he'd seen the two children the chained monster had taken down. But he could barely remember them through the panicked haze, the desperation to escape their fate and find his mother.

 

"People died in No.6, didn't they? Never had anyone come back in the middle of town?"

 

Shion lifted his head and gawked at him. "Come back in the middle of town? How would that happen? There weren't any Bees in No.6—er, well, not before today. And besides, don't you have to be bitten in order to—"

 

"You—," Nezumi's eyes widened. He opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, closed it, glanced over his shoulder, and made a sharp gesture with his hands. "I don't even know what—they never warned you people about—"

 

"Nezumi, what are you talking about?" Shion went cold from his hairline to his toes. _Bees only come from those who are bitten. The walls of No.6 kept them out. The walls kept us safe. Except there was something else in No.6, something beneath No.6, and it's wearing a Security Uniform. I don't know what to think anymore_.

 

Nezumi's blade-silver eyes closed and he exhaled. It was a sharp, exhausted sound. Shion felt a spike of aggravation, a flush of embarrassment. He wanted to understand why Nezumi looked at him as if he were some insolent child. He needed to understand _why_ No.6 had a monster wrapped in chains tucked beneath the Security Bureau. "There's too much you just don't get," said Nezumi, under his breath. Shion barely caught the words. "Jesus Christ."

 

"Then tell me," Shion interjected. He grabbed the sleeve of Nezumi's black leather jacket, and surprisingly Nezumi made no move to retract himself. "If I don't understand, then tell me. Don't just leave me in the dark. I need to understand why—"

 

"And if you _do_ understand why that monster is in No.6," Nezumi interrupted, and something in his sharp tone made Shion's spine straighten and his jaw tighten, "what will you do with that information? You can't possibly hope to go after it. No.6 is a monster—that thing is a monster. What's your plan, you just gonna go running into No.6 and cut its head off? Tch. Best of luck, Your Highness. You wouldn't be the first to make the attempt."

 

Shion stepped back and wrapped his arms around himself. Dirt flecked the hem of his white uniform. He wanted to burn it. He stood out, too much for comfort. He reeked of blood and sweat and sour air and smoke. "That's not—" His voice was a shattered whisper. "Of course I wouldn't just go barging back to No.6 and try to—That's not the point!"

 

"Then what?" Nezumi pressed. "If I tell you what the monster is, what good will it do you?"  


 

" _I don't know!_ " Shion snapped. And as soon as he admitted it to himself, he realized how true it was. Why did he want to know? The information really didn't do him any good now that he was no longer in No.6. And even if Nezumi did tell him what the monster was, and even if he speculated on why it lived under the Security Bureau, knowing would never allow Shion to destroy it—whatever it was. He folded in on himself as if he'd been punched in the gut, mouth tasting of metal. Shion mumbled, "I don't...I don't know."

 

Nezumi didn't say anything for a long time. Shion wasn't so sure he wanted him to. Tucked in on himself, he glanced over at the narrow road to his right. Down the road were the two Bees, wandering through eternity, no longer living but still stuck here. Something had happened to them. Whatever had happened during the First Strike, it had been an accident, and the two standing in the fenced-in yard had not been involved. Victims, both, who'd become sick and died, and then _returned_. _What was this road like, before the Bees came? If the First Strike hadn't happened, would I even be here?_

 

"The Chained One," said Nezumi, and the name seemed to roll off his tongue as if he'd said it hundreds of times before. His hand crept to his shoulder, the one Shion had put stitches in the night they'd met in his bedroom four years ago. His eyes darkened. "That's what we call him—those of us outside the wall."

 

"The Chained One," Shion repeated. "You've dealt with it—with _him_ before, haven't you?"

 

"I ran into him four years ago," Nezumi replied, "but that wasn't the first time I'd seen him. He used to patrol around East Block, before the fire."

 

"Why?"

 

Nezumi shook his head. "You said he was wearing a Security Uniform, didn't you? I'm guessing No.6 put him there."

 

Shion thought about the thick chains wrapped around his wrists and neck. Elongated, black-tipped fingers, a twisted gray face, dark strands of hair dripping down his spine in filthy strands, blackened bullet holes where eyes should have been. _The Chained One—that makes sense_. "But how could No.6 have something like that in their control?" Shion asked. "He's not a Bee—is he?"

 

"If he's _not_ ," Nezumi said with a bitter sneer, "then he's doing a damn good job pretending."

 

Shion felt the beginnings of a headache coming on. He pressed a hand to his forehead. "Come on," Nezumi replied, gesturing over his shoulder. "Shouldn't be too much of a problem to cross the road and take cover under those branches. Those two in the fence shouldn't notice us." Was it Shion's imagination, or was his tone much kinder now than it had been before? "We're not too far, Your Majesty. Try and hang on just a little bit more."

 

Nezumi took him by the wrist, and Shion let him. He doubted he could have pulled away even if he wanted to. Nezumi looked small, but he was _strong_. He led them across the narrow dirt road, and for the few seconds they were exposed to the open sky and the sunlight, Shion felt more unsafe than he had in Lost Town. Nezumi tucked them both in the cool shade of an oak tree, and after glancing back over his shoulder, over Shion's shoulder, he crept forward. And as they crept by the cottage and the fence of the patches of overgrowth, Shion tried not to look at the two Bees standing still as statues in the yard—where they'd been standing for God knew how long and, unless someone with a gun or a sword or a knife came along and chopped them to bits, they would continue to stand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with that, we get a bit more information about the Chained One, and now we have a name to put to him. Throughout this story we will continue to learn a bit more about him: what he is, why he's in No.6, what he can do, and perhaps even a few hints as to who he was before the First Strike.
> 
> In our next chapter, Shion and Nezumi will arrive in the safety of West Block, and after that, we'll be able to set out finding out _what_ happened to Karan and where Safu is/what she's doing now/whether she made it safe and sound into one of the safety houses in Chronos.
> 
> I'd like to extend a special thank-you to all of those who have sent me kudos, comments, and those who have followed this story in its entirety. It warms my heart to know that people have been enjoying it. I look forward to seeing you all in the next chapter!
> 
> Have an amazing night, everybody!


	8. The Arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was a low groan, and Shion turned to see a gray face on the other side of the fence, black-dripping mouth inches from his fingers. He yanked his hand back, sucking in a sharp gasp, and scrambled back. Nezumi caught his forearm. Shion's hands went to his mouth, sinking his teeth into his knuckles to keep from dropping to his knees and morphing into a shrieking, mindless mess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the next chapter of my No.6 zombie AU. It's been a lot of fun writing this story, though I'll be happy once I'm able to get into some of the more action-packed, feel-worthy chapters. Hopefully this story will continue to hold everyone's interest in the meantime.
> 
> Inukashi appears in this chapter, and I am very excited for that, since I love including them as a character in my stories. I know there are some debates about Inukashi's gender identity, but my personal belief is that Inukashi uses they/them pronouns. However, I am in no way stating that _my_ interpretation is the only interpretation.
> 
> Enjoy the chapter, everyone, and have an amazing day!

Shion stood in front of a massive, imposing chain-link fence, watching the shadows drifting in the distance. He had heard of West Block—one of the small, low-population way stations deep in the forests around No.6. He’d never been outside of No.6 before today, but in Chronos, Shion had learned about ravished survivors from the First Strike permanently taking up residence in way stations.

 

Food was scarce following the outbreak. Looting became common. Medicine, medical supplies, and provisions were limited; those too poor to seek refuge in the City-States moved into whatever safe havens they could find.

 

Bounty hunters, Shion had been told, were the only ones skilled enough to survive for long periods of time outside the protection of a fence. “Nezumi,” Shion said, suddenly overtaken by realization. “Are you a bounty hunter?”

 

“Of course not,” Nezumi replied. He ran his fingers over the rusted links of the fence. Shion looked over his left shoulder and peered into the darkness of the forest surrounding them.

 

The rest of the trip to West Block had not been pleasant. There were no Bees wandering about, but that did not mean the forests were safe. Within half a mile of arriving outside the fence Nezumi claimed belonged to West Block, Shion had been bitten by a spider. It was a small brown thing with fuzzy, spindly legs, and had come falling down from one of the high branches.

 

The bite was not poisonous—Shion had enough understanding of wildlife from his studies in Chronos to know he was in no dangerous of succumbing to venom, but the sudden spike of pain on the back of his hand caused him to yelp, rather loudly, a sharp sound that tapered off into the trees.

 

Nezumi’s hand came down across his mouth, but it was too late. Something off in the distance cracked; a fallen branch, crunched beneath a poorly placed foot. “Shit,” Nezumi muttered. He glared into the shade, peering through branches.

 

“But—but we haven’t seen a Bee for  _ miles _ ,” Shion whispered, prying Nezumi’s hand away from his mouth. “We should have been safe—”

 

“The forest is  _ never _ safe, you stupid, pampered prince,” Nezumi hissed. “Just because there haven’t been Bees stomping around doesn’t mean they aren’t lurking.” He gestured ahead. “Do exactly as I do.” He then started scurrying through the branches, feet barely making a sound, and Shion, listening for any signs that the dark, dripping mouthed beasts haunting the shadows were closing in around him.

 

Shion and Nezumi walked briefly past some trees before the ground gave way to wet, mucky stretches of swamp land. Nezumi stepped into the bog with a sick squelching sound, pressing his boot onto one of the mossy stones in front of him. It sank down an inch into the sopping marsh, but the stone was firm enough to hold his weight. He stepped onto another stone, then another, back straightened and head moving to glance at the nooks and crannies of the great expanse of forest surrounding them—so many places for monsters to hide from sight.

 

The dirt held natural toxins, Shion deduced, from the bones of small animals jutting up from its depths. He followed behind Nezumi, taking careful note of where he placed his feet, how he held his body to maintain balance. He and Nezumi kept on in silence, taking the marshland one stone at a time.

 

Nezumi made it across first, and turned to help Shion down off the rocks. Shion stepped down, graciously taking Nezumi's hand. He listened through the woods for snapping branches or rustling leaves. he only heard the strange whispering of the forest winds. As he stalked forward, the whispers were inaudible, but he could hear low groans.

 

Shion spotted the distant glint of chain linked fence and started toward it, but Nezumi caught his arm. " _ Exactly _ as I do," he repeated. He tugged at the hood of his cloak, putting it up over his head, and stepped into the field.

 

As Nezumi led him through the field, bits of pollen flew up around them, bits of gold sticking to their arms and faces. Nezumi knelt down, studying footprints in the slick mud. They led out of the field and back into the forest in a curved arch.

 

"Footprints?" Shion whispered, bending down and taking a closer look. The shape of the sole was smaller than he expected.  _ How could a child survive out here? _ Glancing at the path they carved into the mud, it was clear the steps were fresh, and the path was too thought-out to belong to a Bee. "Did a bounty hunter make these?"  _ But that would mean that a child is out here, in the woods, acting like a bounty hunter, and that's _ —

 

"No," said Nezumi, and Shion's shoulders dropped in relief. "But something just as  _ dangerous _ as one did."

 

Shion kept his eyes on the line of thick trees. Something moved behind them. He grasped Nezumi's shoulder and squeezed. "Nezumi, there's a—" Nezumi's hand came up and covered Shion's mouth again, and suddenly he found a stern pair of silver eyes in his face.

 

"Seriously," Nezumi snarled, "how many times am I going to have to keep doing this?"

 

Shion blinked.

 

"Geez, what the hell have I gotten myself into?" Nezumi extracted his hand from Shion's face and pointed to the fence in the distance. "See that over there? That's West Block. Think you can make it there  _ without _ bringing a horde down on us?"

 

Shion gawked at the dark figure wandering through the branches.  _ Bees can't move quickly. If there's just one, we'll be fine _ . He nodded. Nezumi stared at him, lingering for a long time on his expression, and then with a short nod, he led Shion through the marsh and to the fence of West Block.

 

**~ * ~ * ~ * ~**

 

Nezumi grasped onto the fence and rattled it. He knocked his hand against the metal, clanging his fist three times, paused for two seconds, and then banged his fist against the chains again. Shion linked his fingers through the chains and pressed his face against the cool metal. "What are you doing?"

 

"Letting them know we're here," replied Nezumi.

 

"Letting  _ who _ know—"

 

There was a low groan, and Shion turned to see a gray face on the other side of the fence, black-dripping mouth inches from his fingers. He yanked his hand back, sucking in a sharp gasp, and scrambled back. Nezumi caught his forearm. Shion's hands went to his mouth, sinking his teeth into his knuckles to keep from dropping to his knees and morphing into a shrieking, mindless mess.

 

The face on the other side of the fence was twisted and pale; she was an imposing woman, larger than Shion had ever seen, dressed in a filthy, tattered black dress. Her hair, a twisted tangle of white, fell down her back, run through with twigs and mud. Her face was perfectly visible in the high sunlight, and Shion could see the true horror—her eyes. Not crimson, like a Bee's were meant to be, or a living, human color, but sunken, black eye sockets. Gray streaks painted down her white cheeks. Shion thought of the chained beast blasting its way through No.6.

 

_ The Chained One. This woman is just like _ — Shion pointed at a thick leather collar around the woman's neck, and when she lifted her arms up to reach for the fence, he spotted ropes around her stick-thin wrists. "S—she—she's a—a—a—a B—a B—"

 

"A Bee,  _ yes _ ," Nezumi answered. He hauled Shion upright and pulled him to the side. "Don't worry about her; she's part of West Block's security system."

 

"West Block's security—"

 

"It's about  _ time _ you came home, Nezumi!"

 

Shion glanced up and spotted a short, dark shape stepping out from behind one of the thick patches of brush behind the fence of West Block. The shadow belonged to a young teen, with a long waterfall of black hair. Their dark skin was streaked with mud, and as the teen approached the fence, Shion saw that their clothes were ripped and streaked in filth, old and new, as if they lived outside in the trees and brush. The teen stepped around the swinging hands of the Bee woman, stepping over a taut rope tied to an iron stake pressed into the ground, and leaned against the fence.

 

Nezumi yanked the hood away from his face. Strands of dark gray hair stuck to the nape of his neck. "Please. I wasn't gone  _ that _ long, Inukashi."

 

"Took your sweet ass time getting back here. Jesus Christ, you take off without a word, and then your fucking manager comes pounding on my door, demanding to know where his 'main attraction' booked off to  _ this _ time, like I'm your fucking keeper or something—" The teen glancing over at Shion, looked back to Nezumi, and then snapped back to stare at Shion. "And  _ you _ would be...?"

 

"Oh, um," Shion started. "I'm, um—"

 

"He's my pet," Nezumi interjected with a flippant wave of the hand.

 

"Huh?" Shion blinked.

 

The teen behind the chain link fence snorted. "Your  _ pet? _ Christ, never thought I'd see the day." Their dark eyes flashed to Shion, and after a moment they shook their head. "Get over here already. Your manager's pissed, by the way."

 

Nezumi blew a strand of hair out of his face. "What else is new?"

 

"Your manager?" Shion asked. "Who's—"

 

"Never you mind that." Nezumi pointed to the fence. "Get climbing."

 

"Climbing?" Shion craned his neck and stared up the side of the metal links. The fence rose a good five feet above his head; several sections were rusted from the rain. The Bee woman tied down with ropes continued to claw at the air. Her vacant sockets stared ahead, hearing the conversation but seeing nothing. Shion linked his fingers through the fence and glanced over at the woman; he swallowed a lump in his throat. "Um, I'm not sure I can..."

 

"There are no gates to get into West Block. If you can't climb the fence, then you can't get into the way stations. You're more than welcome to sleep out here tonight, although," said Nezumi, glancing over his shoulder into the marshlands, "I'm not sure you'll enjoy the company."

 

Shion took a deep breath. His hands trembled on the fence. "That woman—the Bee," he murmured, jerking his head toward the eyeless, clawing woman. "Nezumi, did you know her, like you knew Ira?"

 

"Ira?" Inukashi snorted. "Who the fuck is Ira?"

 

Nezumi's silver eyes narrowed. "No, I didn't. She was here long before me."

 

Shion pressed his lips in a thin line and nodded. He grasped the links and edged the toe of his boot into one of the larger sections. Using what little strength he had, Shion dragged himself up, forearms and biceps straining. The chain fence dipped back with the sudden weight; he wondered if Nezumi was still standing on the ground below, or if he was attempting to climb, too.  _ There'd be too much weight, then. Don't be stupid, Shion _ .

 

He reached up for the top of the fence—and his foot, pressed into one of the notches, slipped. Shion gasped and slumped down the side of the metal. The loud rattling sound caught the attention of the blind Bee; her head snapped around, staring with eyeless sockets at Shion, mouth clacking open and closed.

 

Shion grabbed for the metal before he collapsed to the ground, and felt something press against the back of his thigh. He glanced down, spotting Nezumi with his arm held up, hand pressed hard against Shion’s leg. Their eyes locked—silver holding deep amber—and Shion nodded. He dragged himself back up the fence, wincing the rest of the way.

 

The drop from the top of the fence was higher than Shion anticipated; he groaned as his leg landed against the soft mud and gravel. Inukashi stepped back, arms folded across their chest. Shion straightened his spine, just in time to hear Nezumi grunt and land next to him. “Wha—how?” Shion looked at Nezumi, then back over to the fence behind him. “How’d you get over that so fast?”

 

“I’ve had more practice,” said Nezumi with a dismissive wave of the hand. He grabbed Shion by the bicep and dragged him away from the blind Bee woman; she’d turned in their direction, alerted by the sound, and snarled. “Get moving,” he ordered, and Shion, prying his eyes away from the Bee, hurried onward.

 

Inukashi tripped along beside them; Shion glanced down and noticed their feet, trapped in a ruined pair of worn sandals that wrapped halfway up their calf. Small feet, just like the footprints in the muck outside of the chain link fence. “The fuck were you doing outside this time?” Inukashi snorted. Their bare arm darted out from beneath a long white cloak and scrubbed beneath their nose.

 

“None of your business, that’s what,” Nezumi quipped.

 

Inukashi spat on the ground. “Asshole. Tell your manager to leave me alone if you aren’t going to give me any answers, then.”

 

Shion glanced ahead; he noticed that, just like the woods outside the fence, the inside was speckled with tall trees, low-hanging branches hovering in front of his face. Nezumi swatted them aside. Thick pine scents hung by his nose; he sneezed.

 

Inukashi stepped to the right, and Nezumi dragged Shion in the same direction. He nearly went sprawling in the mud, startled by the movement, and glanced up to see why Nezumi had yanked him aside. Ten meters ahead, slightly to the left—close to the fence—another blind Bee snapped at the end of a long rope hammered into the ground.

 

“Another one?” Shion murmured.

 

“I told you,” Nezumi answered. “They’re part of West Block’s security system.”

 

“The way stations don’t have gates,” Inukashi piped up, walking backward with their arms raised over their head, totally relaxed in a world filled to the teeth with death, “but people still try to scale the fences and take our supplies. The Bees discourage them from trying—especially at night.”

 

“Why blind them?” Shion asked.

 

Inukashi’s expression darkened; they gestured to the Bee. “We didn’t. Old Mona—that’s the Bee woman you saw, by the way—and Big Jimmy, the one over there, are Originals.” At Shion’s confused stare, Inukashi gave Nezumi a vicious glare. “Jesus Christ, where’d you find this guy? An Original,” Inukashi told Shion, speaking in a slow manner, as if answering a child’s inquiry, “is a Bee that’s existed since the First Strike. These two were related to the family that created West Block, and so we use them as a security system.”

 

“But—but that would make them over twenty years old,” Shion said, glancing over his shoulder to gawk at the blind Bee. Now that he focused, he could see that the Bee had once been a tall man, stuffed with muscle, skin drained of color, a filthy shock of white hair spilling down to his shoulders.

 

“Bees stop rotting, after a time,” Nezumi explained with a shrug. “The scientists at No.6 could probably explain  _ why _ to you, but—” His lips drew back in a sardonic smile. “You can’t exactly go back to No.6 and ask, now can you, Your Highness?”

 

“Your Highness?” Inukashi raised an eyebrow. “This kid? Hold on, you’re from  _ No.6? _ How the fuck—”

 

Nezumi led Shion, Inukashi taking up the front, out of the copse of trees and onto a winding dirt road. Shion glanced up and noticed the cluster of trees had thinned out, and the long road led down a small hill and into a large collection of run-down buildings.

 

West Block was pressed close to the side of a mountain, surrounded on all four sides by a rusted fence made of metallic links. Several of the buildings were clustered together—even from this distance, Shion could see men and women milling about in the streets. The thick expanse of trees between the fence and the buildings kept the roped Bees out of sight; Shion was not comforted. If the ropes were to snap, how would the citizens of the way station know a member of the walking dead would be upon them soon?

 

Nezumi let go of Shion’s arm and gestured for him to follow. Inukashi began down the dirt road at a leisurely stroll, Nezumi hanging back. Shion blinked at the men and women going about their lives without a care in the world.

 

“Let’s go,” Nezumi called over his shoulder.

 

Shion sprinted to his side and stuck close. His hands trembled. He fought down the urge to reach out and grab the hem of Nezumi’s jacket, bury himself in the protective warmth of the gray cloak, and pretend for a minute that his world hadn’t come crashing down around him.

 

As soon as Shion and Nezumi and Inukashi stepped into the shopping center of West Block, Shion noticed the array of posters clinging to the wooden walls, stapled to barrels of filthy water, fluttering like dead leaves from the tall posts holding patchy umbrellas above tables filled with fruit. A bony woman dressed in a brown shawl hollered to passing women, announcing “apples”, “oranges”, and “pears”.

 

Shion squinted closer at the posters. There were small, colored photographs, faded from months exposed to direct sunlight, paper clipped to one corner, displaying men and women of all ages, colors, and shapes. The rotten papers the photographs were clipped to were portraits of the same people—only redesigned to display what that same person might look like as a Bee. Kind expressions had been twisted into vicious snarls, black drool dripping down their long throats.

 

Shion tugged on Nezumi’s sleeve, and when silver eyes glanced over and glared at him, Shion pointed to one of the papers displaying a kind-eyed little girl and a small Bee with the lower jaw hanging loose. “Are those wanted posters?”

 

“In a sense,” Nezumi replied. He steered Shion through a crowded area; he sucked in a breath and squeezed in between two men arguing the price of a half-filled bottle of whiskey. Shion tripped over one of the men’s feet and heard a curse shouted at his back.

 

“Those belong to people who went missing a while ago,” Inukashi said with a nasty laugh. “Half the time, no one shows up, but people are sentimental. Some whimpering mother hoping her son will turn up alive, but deep down she knows he’s been a Bee for a while. That’s why people pay artists to redesign their missing loved ones as the living dead. Makes it easier for bounty hunters to pick them out of a crowd.”

 

_ Some whimpering mother hoping her son will turn up alive _ . Shion’s mouth went dry.  _ Mom. You’re out there somewhere, safe and alive, right? I’m OK, too, Mom. I’m alive. Don’t worry about me _ .

 

Sensing Shion’s drop in mood, Nezumi jerked his head toward one of the massive brown buildings toward the end of the street. “Come on,” he said, and then turned to address Inukashi. “I’ll swing by and see you later. Did you get the information I asked for?”

 

“Of course I did,” Inukashi snapped, “what do you take me for? It’s going to cost you, though. Took me quite a bit of resources to unearth  _ this _ crap, you know.”

 

“You’ll get paid,” Nezumi said, rolling his eyes. “Quit your bitching.”

 

Inukashi gave an indignant snort and turned, but not before giving Shion a vicious smile. “See you around, kid. If you ever need information, come find me.”

 

The teen danced away into the crowds, and Shion thought, for a moment, he spotted a dark-furred dog right on their heels. Nezumi grabbed him by the forearm and steered him away from the crowd, toward a building with a fingerprint-smeared gold plate swinging from a set of rusted chains above a red door. Shion tried to read the letters, but thick smudges obscured the letters. “Let’s go,” Nezumi said. “I’ve got an errand to run, and then we can get you home to take a nap, Your Highness.”

 

“I don’t need a  _ nap _ . I’m fine—” Or, at least Shion would have said all that, except he yawned halfway through and frowned when Nezumi laughed.

 

“ _ Sure _ you don’t. Come on.” Nezumi shoved him toward the red door and Shion, no longer in control of where he was going or what happened, pushed the crimson expanse of wood open and stepped inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shion and Nezumi are finally in West Block, and we have met Inukashi. Rikiga will be introduced next, as the errand that Nezumi has to run involves going into the house he just shoved Shion into and interacting with Rikiga. In the next chapter we will find out exactly what profession Rikiga has, and why he has chosen to live in the West Block way station.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has supported this story. It means a lot to me that people are enjoying it; I hope to continue to write a story you all will enjoy. In the next few chapters, things will become a bit more action-packed and feel-worthy, so that should be exciting.
> 
> Have an awesome day, everyone, and I look forward to seeing you all again in the next chapter!


	9. Note About Updates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note about Updates and What's Coming Next

Good early-evening to all my readers. It's been a little while, hasn't it? Recently things have come up with work that have prevented me from being able to update ripped apart and the other stories that I have been working on. While these are things that have moved a bit beyond my control, I would still like to extend my apologies to all the readers who have been patiently waiting for the next chapter.

 

After taking some time to go back and analyze the chapters that I have updated, I've come to the realization that I'm not overly thrilled with the quality of the product that I have submitted. There are some points that I wish to update and change to make this fan fiction one of the best it can be. I feel that you, as the readers, deserve the best product I am able to produce. Those of you who have stuck with me from the beginning have inspired me to put my best foot forward and pour my heart and soul into my work. I feel as if I have not done that with this story.

 

That being said, it is my intention to go back through _ripped apart_ and correct/edit it into the story I wish it to be. Much of the plot will remain the same, but there will be some differences. My goal is to repost _ripped apart_ with these changes soon; I'm hoping that you will all join me in the new update once it has been completed. After that, I'm hoping to get this story on a relatively regular update-schedule.

 

Here's hoping that you all have an excellent day, and I will see you in the new updates.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of the prologue is a shout-out to Shakespeare, in which one of his most famous stage directions is: "exit, pursued by a bear". And since we all know that Nezumi is a huge fucking Shakespeare nerd, I thought that title would be appropriate for a prologue where he's being chased.
> 
> Starting right off the bat with something awful. But hey, nothing says "zombie apocalypse" quite like a zombie right in the prologue, am I right?
> 
> The next chapter will be much longer than this one. I'm planning on having each chapter be rather long, so hopefully that will tide people over while waiting for the next one.
> 
> Hopefully I'll have the next chapter up and running by tomorrow morning. Since it's my night off from work, and they've altered my work schedule so that I'm awake at night, maybe I'll be able to get some work done. That would be nice. I have a ton of stuff I would like to get back to and/or start working on.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who has stuck by me, to all those authors and artists out there who have inspired me, and I'll look forward to seeing you all again in the next chapter. Have an awesome day, guys!


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